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HAMLET 
AND THE SCOTTISH SUCCESSION 



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HAMLET 

AND 

THE SCOTTISH SUCCESSION 

BEING AN EXAMINATION OF THE RELATIONS OF 
THE PLAY OF HAMLET TO THE SCOTTISH 
SUCCESSION AND THE ESSEX CONSPIRACY 

BY 

LILIAN WINSTANLEY 



CAMBRIDGE 

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

1921 






o1 



j-n 



Printed in Great Britain 
\y Tumlmll&- Siears, Edinburgh 



In Memoriam 

THOMAS FRANCIS ROBERTS, 
d.litt., ll.d. 

Principal of the University College of Wales 

Aberystwyth 

1891-1919 



*' Revered as a teacher, beloved as a friend, and 
remembered as an inspiration.'' 



" Ei fywyd yn fflam dros Addysg ei wlad." 



PREFACE 

I WISH to thank my historical colleagues at Aberystwyth 
for the sympathy and help they have given me during 
the writing of the following essay : Mr Sidney Herbert 
for recommending books, Dr E. A. Lewis for his invaluable 
assistance in directing me to State Papers and many other 
contemporary documents, and especially to Professor 
Stanley Roberts for reading my proofs, for giving me 
much information on Elizabethan history, and for his 
unfailing kindness in discussion and criticism. 



Lilian Winstanley 



The University College of Wales, 
Aberystwyth, November 1920 



CONTENTS 



FAG£ 



Introduction ....... i 

CHAP. 

I. Richard II. and Hamlet • • • • 33 

II. Hamlet and the Darnley Murder . . 48 

III. James I. and Hamlet ..... 72 

IV. " The Play Within the Play" and Hamlet's 

Voyage to England . . . .102 

V. POLONIUS, RlZZIO AND BuRLEIGH . . . I09 

VI. Ophelia 129 

VII. Hamlet and Essex 139 

VIII. Conclusion 165 

Appendices 183 

Index ......... 187 



HAMLET AND THE 
SCOTTISH SUCCESSION 

(Being an Examination of the Relations of the Play 

OF Hamlet to the Scottish Succession and the 

Essex Conspiracy) 

INTRODUCTION 

It is the purpose of the following essay to study the 
play of Hamlet from a somewhat fresh point of view by 
endeavouring to show its relation or possible relation to 
contemporary history. 

My attempt throughout has been to regard the play as 
it naturally would be regarded by an Elizabethan audience, 
for it seems to me that this particular angle of vision has 
hitherto been too little considered in our current criticism. 
We have not sufficiently reahsed, I think, that to consider 
the Elizabethan audience is our least indirect method of 
approach to Shakespeare himself. A dramatic poet 
cannot possibly ignore the mentality of his audience ; 
an epic poet may, if he pleases, write, as we know Milton 
actually did write, for posterity and for an audience " fit 
though few " ; but a dramatic poet who does genuinely 
produce his plays before a popular audience cannot 
possibly do anything of the kind. The mentality of his 
audience provides him with at least half of his material. 
It is through that mentality that his plays must be 

A I 



2 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

reviewed and considered ; it is to that mentality they must 
all appeal. If the dramatic poet wishes to discuss problems 
his task is immensely facilitated by selecting problems 
in which his audience are already interested ; if he wishes 
to awaken feelings of terror and pathos, as every true 
dramatist must, his task is immensely facilitated if he 
appeals to associations already existing in their minds. 

The mentality of his audience everywhere shapes and 
conditions his work as certainly as the work of a sculptor 
is shaped by the architecture and purpose of the building 
in which it stands. The sculpture of the Parthenon is 
not more certainly adapted to the purpose of the Par- 
thenon than are the plays of a true dramatist to the 
mentality of his audience. 

Now, in the case of Shakespeare, the mentality of the 
audience is doubly important, because there is no direct 
method of approach. Shakespeare himself has left no 
letters or prefaces which explain his work ; his contem- 
poraries have left no criticisms ; the notices we possess 
of his plays are extremely meagre and most of them 
limited, like those of Forman, to a mere reference to the 
subject of the play. 

Neither can we judge Shakespeare completely by the 
effect produced on our own minds; we, after all, are a 
remote posterity, and nothing is more certain than that 
he did not write for us. We ourselves may be quite 
adequate judges of the purely aesthetic effect of the plays ; 
but, in order to understand them fully, it is surely necessary 
to ask what their effect upon a contemporary audience 
would be Hkely to be and what such an audience would 
probably think they meant. 



Introduction 3 

The moment we attempt to place ourselves at the same 
angle of vision as an EHzabethan audience we see many 
things in a different light ; many problems solve them- 
selves quite simply ; but, on the other hand, many are 
suggested which do not occur to the modern reader, and 
which nevertheless surely demand solution if we are to 
comprehend Shakespeare fully and completely. 

I propose to give illustrations of both types of pro- 
blems, of those which solve themselves and of those which 
suggest themselves. 

Let us enquire, for instance, why Shakespeare selected 
the subject of Macbeth ? One reason is obvious. A 
Scottish king had recently succeeded to the throne and 
the choice of a Scottish theme was, in itself, a compU- 
ment to him. Then, again, Banquo was the ancestor of 
the Stuarts, and the subject of the play enables Shake- 
speare to depict Banquo in a favourable light. 

But is there any reason for the selection of Macbeth 
himself as a hero ? 

There is, I think, an exceedingly good one ; but it only 
becomes evident after a careful study of the ideas of the 
epoch. 

Macbeth was the person who fulfilled the Merlin pro- 
phecies and, by so doing, brought about the foundation 
of the British Empire. The Merlin prophecies, as inter- 
preted by the so-called Tudor bards, were to the effect 
that the ancient British line should once again succeed 
to the throne of England and that, when it did so succeed, 
the different British kingdoms should be united under 
one crown and the ancient Arthurian empire restored. 
Professor Gwynn Jones assures me that these Merlin 



4 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

prophecies had an important poHtical bearing in sixteenth- 
century Wales ; they certainly had in England, and they 
were celebrated by many poets, notably Spenser, Drayton, 
and Ben Jonson. 

Drayton's lines happen to be the most apposite for my 
purpose, so I quote them : 

" the ancient British race 
Shall come again to sit upon the sovereign place. . . . 
By Tudor, with fair winds from httle Britaine driven, 
To whom the goodly bay of Milford shall be given ; 
As thy wise prophets, Wales, foretold his wish'd arrive 
And how Lewellin's line in him should doubly thrive. 
For from his issue sent to Albany before. 
Where his neglected blood his virtue did restore 
He first unto himself in fair succession gained 
The Stewards nobler name ; and afterwards attained 
The royal Scottish wreath, upholding it in state. 
This stem, to Tudors joined . . . 
Suppressing every Plant, shall spread itself so wide 
As in his arms shall clip the Isle on every side. 
By whom three severed realms in one shall firmly stand 
As Britain-founding Brute first monarchised the Land." ^ 

Selden's note on the above passage is : " About our 
Confessor's time, Macbeth, King of Scotland (moved 
by prediction, affirming that his line extinct, the posterity 
of Banquho, a noble thane of Loqhuabre, should attain 
and continue the Scottish reign) and, jealous of others, 
hoped — for greatness, murdered Banquho, but missed 
his design ; for one of the same posterity, Fleanch son 
to Banquho, privily fled to Gryfhth ap Llewelin (Drayton 
Polyolbion, Song V.), then Prince of Wales, and was there 
kindly received. To him and Nesta, the Prince's daughter, 

^ Drayton, Polyolbion, Song V. 



Introduction 5 

was issue one Walter. . . . The rest alludes to that : 
Cambria shall be glad, Cornwall shall flourish, and the 
Isle shall be styled with Brute's name and the name of 
strangers shall perish : as it is in Merhn's prophecies." 

We are now in a position to see what Macbeth really 
meant to the Elizabethans : he was the man who ful- 
filled the Merhn prophecies, and he fulfilled them by the 
very fact that he tried to evade them ; when Fleance, 
the son of the murdered Banquho, fled to Wales he inter- 
married with the ancient British line and thus brought 
its blood to the throne of Scotland. 

Now the Elizabethans always laid immense stress on 
this genealogy for their monarchs ; anyone who will 
refer to Camden's genealogy of the Tudors will see that 
he derives their line from Brutus the Trojan, and the 
Stuarts, as we have just seen from Drayton and Selden, 
were similarly derived through Fleance the son of 
Banquho. 

Now an Elizabethan audience would surely see in 
Macbeth the same theme as in the lines quoted from 
Drayton. We have the enormous stress laid on prophecy 
throughout the play, we have the question of the succession 
prominent in Macbeth's mind, we have the murder of 
Banquho and the flight of Fleance, we have the future 
shown to Macbeth with the progeny of this Fleance 
succeeding, and we have the vision of the unity of the 
British Isles in the procession of the kings who " two- 
fold balls and treble-sceptres carry " and whose lines 
" stretch out to the crack of doom." 

Macbeth has, then, the same theme as the passage 
already quoted from Drayton ; what they both deal 



6 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

with is the founding or, as they would have put it, the 
restoration of the British Empire. 

The main conception is exactly similar to those which 
occur in Greek tragedy, where the very attempt to evade 
prophecy brings about its fulfilment, and the theme is as 
intimately interwoven with British history in the widest 
and truest sense of the term as any theme selected by 
a Greek dramatist was interwoven with Greek history. 
It is difficult to imagine any subject more appropriate 
to render before James I. ; he was the destined restorer 
of the ancient Arthurian empire, the man destined to 
unite England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland all under 
the same crown, as long ago prophesied by Merlin, 
and the play shows how the effort to avert the succes- 
sion from the line of Banquho led precisely to its 
fulfilment.^ 

Or let me choose another illustration. Suppose we ask 
whether Shakespeare's Denmark, as depicted in Hamlet, 
is a real country or not and, if real, what country ! Every- 
one will admit that Denmark makes a singularly real and 
vivid impression upon the mind ; it is as real, in the 
dramatic sense, as any country we have ever known or 
heard of. But did Shakespeare invent it as a background 
for his melancholy prince, or was he describing any 
country he knew ? It certainly is not the Denmark of 
his source ; the Denmark of Saxo Grammaticus is an 
almost entirely barbaric country, savage and primitive 
to a degree ; even the Hamlet, the hero of the primitive 
story, cuts an enemy's body to pieces and boils it and 
outrages a woman, and yet he is the best person in 
^ See note A , Appendix. 



Introduction 7 

the whole piece. Is Shakespeare's Denmark, then, an 
imaginary region created by himself ? 

Let us ask what an Ehzabethan audience would have 
made of it. I do not think there need be five minutes' 
delay about the answer to this question. An Elizabethan 
audience would almost certainly have thought Denmark 
a real country, and they would have believed it to be 
contemporary Scotland. 

The peculiar combination of circumstances and the 
peculiar type of manners depicted in Shakespeare's 
Denmark are, in the highest degree, distinctive and 
strange ; but they can every one be paralleled in the case 
of sixteenth-century Scotland. 

Shakespeare's Denmark, to begin with, is a country 
where feudal anarchy reigns ; there is no settled law and 
order : the crown is seized by a usurper and almost every 
principal personage — the elder Hamlet, the younger 
Hamlet, Polonius, Claudius, the Queen — ends either by 
a violent death or by assassination. 

So also was Scotland a feudal anarchy. So also were 
the powers of the crown in Scotland in continual danger 
of being seized by usurpers and insurgents as in the case 
of the elder Bothwell and the younger Bothwell : in 
Scotland also almost every monarch or prominent states- 
man did meet either with a tragic and premature death, 
or with a death by assassination. James V., Mary Queen 
of Scots, Darnley, Rizzio, Murray — these were only the 
most prominent among a number of tragedies : assassina- 
tion was, indeed, the recognised method by which a great 
noble removed a rival. 

Shakespeare has been blamed for the " holocaust of 



8 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 



dead " in Hamlet ; but it is not one whit more remark 
able than the mass of assassinations in sixteenth-century 
Scottish history. The Enghsh of Shakespeare's day had 
a bitter prejudice against Scotland, and very largely on 
account of this anarchy. 

Yet Shakespeare's Denmark is no mere barbaric country ; 
it is distinguished by its love of education, its philo- 
sophical depth, and its power of thought and meditation. 
Of all Shakespeare's tragedies Hamlet is admittedly the 
most philosophic and the most profound ; this has no 
parallel whatever in the original saga, but it has a parallel 
in contemporary Scotland. 

Knox and his body of reformers had already commenced 
that educational revival which was to make Scotland one 
of the most admirably educated countries in Europe ; 
their intellectual interests were largely of a philosophical 
character. 

Now, it is the combination of these circumstances which is 
so peculiar, which is indeed unique, and it is precisely this 
pecuhar combination which appears in Shakespeare's Hamlet 

Moreover, it should be noted that Shakespeare's Denmark 
is quite manifestly a country where the Catholic faith and 
the Protestant exist side by side ; the ghost is certainly 
a Catholic, for he laments nothing more than the fact that 
he was not allowed absolution at his death, that he was 

" Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, 
Unhousel'd, disappointed, unaneled, 
No reckoning made but sent to my account 
With all my imperfections on my head." 

On the other hand, Hamlet is just as plainly a Protestant : 
he has been a fellow-student with Horatio at Wittenberg, 



1 



Introduction 9 

and it is to Wittenberg he wishes to return. Now Witten- 
berg, on account of its connection with Luther, was one 
of the most famous of Protestant Universities. 

This pecuHar combination is, once again, exactly 
paralleled in contemporary Scotland ; the queen's party 
were CathoHcs ; her opponents were the Protestant 
lords, and there was a specially close connection between 
Scotland and German Protestant Universities. Knox 
himself once had a congregation at Frankfort-on-the- 
Main,i and there were manjr other Scotch Protestants in 
different parts of Germany. " There was a whole Scoto- 
German school, among whom the Wedderburns were 
predominant." 

Again, Shakespeare's Denmark is a place where the 
king has been murdered and his wife has married the 
murderer. This also happened in sixteenth- century 
Scotland ; Darnley is almost invariably alluded to in 
contemporary documents (Buchanan's Oration and De- 
tection, for instance), as the '* king " ; the " king " had been 
murdered, and his wife had married the murderer. 

Shakespeare's Denmark also is a place where a councillor 
is murdered in the presence of a queen, and his body 
disposed of '' hugger-mugger " fashion by a staircase. 
This, also, had happened in contemporary Scotland in 
the case of Rizzio's murder. 

I shall show later that in both these cases the resemblances 
between the history and Shakespeare are much more close 
than any possible resemblances with the saga source. 

Moreover, Shakespeare's Denmark is a place where 
there is, apparently, no army at the king's disposal, and 
1 Froude, Chap. X. 



10 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

where, when discontented nobles desire the redress of 
grievances, they enter the palace at the head of an armed 
band, and threaten the king's person, as happens with 
Laertes and Claudius. This was positively the recognised 
method of conducting an opposition in sixteenth-century 
Scotland. When a powerful subject had a grievance, he 
did at once put himself at the head of an armed band, 
and either threaten the person of the king or attempt 
to seize upon the person of the king. 

Then, again, there is the love of strong drink v/hich is 
so marked a feature in Shakespeare's Denmark, and the 
drunken carousals. This also was characteristic of a 
certain conspicuous group in sixteenth-century Scotland ; 
Buchanan continually calls the elder Bothwell a drunken 
beast.i 

Moreover, the resemblance extends even to the smallest 
details. Shakespeare's Denmark shows both Italian 
and Danish names at court ; so did contemporary 
Scotland, there was a Guildenstern (like Shakespeare's), 
and a Francesco (like Shakespeare's), the latter being a 
friend of Rizzio's. 

Now it seems to me that, with all these resemblances 
quite obvious and on the surface, an EHzabethan audience 
would almost certainly assume either that Shakespeare 
was deliberately depicting contemporary Scotland, or, at 
the very least, that he was deliberately borrowing many 
of its distinctive traits. The resemblances range from the 
most inclusive circumstances to the smallest details — 
they embrace the peculiar combinations of feudal anarchy 
and philosophy, of strong drink and of students at German 
1 Oration and Detection. 



Introduction ii 

universities, and they even include a Danish Guildenstern 
and an Italian Francesco. 

And, further, is there anything strange in such a resem- 
blance ? Why should not Shakespeare wish to depict 
sixteenth-century Scotland ? It was a country in which 
Shakespeare's audience were intensely interested : it 
was the country which was just about to provide them 
with a king ; it was a country whose crown was to be 
intimately associated with theirs ; a study of its leading 
traits would be likely to interest Shakespeare's audience 
more than any other subject which, at that particular 
date, it would be possible for him to choose. 

Another example may be chosen from The Merchant 
oj Venice. It is very generally admitted that Shake- 
speare's portrait of a Jew villain is probably in part due 
to the great excitement caused by the trial of a Jew, 
Roderigo Lopez, for the attempted murder of the queen 
and Don Antonio : Lopez was executed in 1594. 

Shakespeare, in drawing the portrait of the Jew villain, 
was availing himself of what was just then a strong 
popular excitement against the Jews. So much is ad- 
mitted ! 1 

But surely the play suggests a good deal more. Antonio 
was a claimant to the throne of Portugal and, as 
the rival claimant was Philip II., Antonio became, on 
this account, a very popular person with the majority 
of the Elizabethans, who hated Philip and instinctively 
took the side of anyone opposed to him. Antonio had 
come to London, bringing with him exceedingly valuable 
jewels ; his purpose was to pledge these with the merchants 
1 See Boas, Shakespeare and His Predecessors. 



12 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

of London, and so to procure the money for ships to 
fight PhiHp of Spain. The Essex and Southampton 
party — Shakespeare's patrons — were keenly in favour 
of a forward pohcy against Spain and consequently in 
favour of Antonio. On the other hand, Ehzabeth 
and Burleigh desired peace ; Antonio was allowed to 
pledge his jewels but, on one pretext or another, he was 
prevented from getting his ships. He was thus in the 
position of a ruined bankrupt, and popular feeling ran 
high in his favour. 

Essex started, on his own account, a system of espionage 
which was deUberately intended to rival that of Burleigh. 
His spies discovered evidence that there was a Spanish 
plot to poison the queen and Don Antonio by using the 
physician — Lopez, as an intermediary. Elizabeth, at 
first, refused wholly to credit the existence of such a plot 
and blamed Essex as a " rash and temerarious youth," 
for bringing accusations against the innocent. Essex, 
however, persisted ; fresh evidence was procured, a public 
trial was ordered, and Lopez was condemned to death. 
Still the queen delayed, and it was three months before 
she could be induced to sign the death-warrant. Even 
then she exercised her prerogative so far as to allow the 
family of Lopez to retain a considerable portion of his wealth. 

Lopez had professed himself a Christian. 

As Naunton points out Elizabeth was regarded as a 
most merciful princess. We may remember that one 
of Spenser's names for her was "Mercilla."i Now this 
tendency to mercy seemed to the public to have been 
exercised too far in the Lopez affair. 

^ Faerie Queene, Bk. V 



Introduction 13 

We might also observe that Don Antonio himself was 
partly Jewish; he was the son of a Jewess who had 
become converted to Christianity. 

Now, surely, we have here very remarkable parallels 
to Shakespeare's play ? 

We have Don Antonio who has been a very wealthy man 
but who has practically become a bankrupt through losses 
incurred over his own ships ; a Jew forms a plot against 
his Hfe and nearly succeeds, but it is discovered, and the 
Jew punished. 

So Shakespeare's hero is an Antonio ; he also has 
been wealthy, but is reduced, apparently, to bankruptcy 
by losses over his ships. So does a Jew attempt his hfe ; 
so is the plot frustrated. 

We have Elizabeth, who will not beheve in the guilt of 
the Jew, who makes every attempt to show him mercy, 
who delays almost intolerably over his trial, but who is 
compelled to give sentence in the end ; we have the fact 
that she was famous for mercy, and that one of her poetic 
names was " Mercilla." 

So Shakespeare gives us Portia, who will not believe in the 
guilt of the Jew, who gives him every possible opportunity, 
who identifies herself with mercy in the noblest of all poetic 
praises ; but who is compelled, finally, to give sentence. 

We have in the play, just as in the history, the fact that 
the fine upon the Jew's goods is remitted, and that they 
are allowed to pass to his children. Moreover, in the 
Hfe of Don Antonio, in the fact that his mother was a 
Jewess who married a Christian, we have a parallel to 
another most interesting episode in Shakespeare's play ; 
that of Lorenzo and Jessica. 



14 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

Is it not probable that Shakespeare selected his material 
and chose his plot largely that his play might appeal to 
interests then paramount in the minds of his audience ? 

Surely nothing can be more plausible ? 

We have even, in Bassanio, a parallel to the situation 
of Essex himself ; he is the friend of Antonio ; he is the 
soldier, the man of noble birth but without fortune, who 
quite frankly approaches Portia to " repair his fortunes." 
So was Essex the friend of Don Antonio ; so had Essex 
hoped to profit by his ships, so was Essex a soldier, young 
and of noble birth, but poor ; so did he approach Elizabeth 
in the frank hope of mending his fortunes. 

We also observe that, if Shakespeare be really drawing 
parallels with history, many of the adverse criticisms 
on his play find at least their explanation. 

Thus there is simply no point in sentimentalising over 
his cruelty in compelling Shylock to become a Christian ; 
the actual historic Jew had professed Christianity and 
did profess it to the end. Neither need we blame him for 
allowing Portia to drag out the trial scene so intolerably 
and '* get on the nerves " of the spectators ; it was just 
precisely this delay which had " got on the nerves " of the 
Elizabethan public. Neither need we wonder that Shake- 
speare allows Portia to give judgment in the Duke's own 
court : it was with Elizabeth that the matter finally rested. 

Is it not easy to see that Shakespeare has taken his 
literary source and has dovetailed into it a great deal of 
history as well ? ^ 

Another incident I will select is from Henry IV., Part II 
— the famous incident of the repudiation of Falstaff. 
^ See note B, Appendix. 



Introduction 15 

In scene after scene throughout the plays we have seen 
Henry rejoicing himself with the inimitable wit of Falstaff, 
treating him as his boon companion, and as one of his 
most intimate friends ; then, on his accession, he re- 
pudiates him pubUcly and orders him to be haled off 
to prison, for we hear the Chief Justice giving the order : 
" Go, carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet." Is not this 
needlessly harsh and stern ? How often has this parti- 
ticular point been debated ! Some of Shakespeare's 
critics do accuse Henry of unnecessary harshness ; a 
number of others find a way out by protesting that it 
was essential for Henry to effect a complete severance 
from Falstaff. Do they think Shakespeare's hero-king 
such a moral weakling that he could not guard himself 
against the temptations of " sack and sugar " except by 
putting the tempter in prison ? 

The truth is that the passage, as it stands, is a perpetual 
puzzle to the modern reader who finds Falstaff a very 
fascinating personage, sympathises with him, and is 
convinced that Henry, whatever grounds he may have 
had for repudiating Falstaff, cannot have had any for 
imprisoning him. 

The explanation, I take it, is again historic. The 
kings of the house of Lancaster had an exceedingly bad 
title in point of law ; they won the all-powerful support 
of the Church only by engaging in a perpetual heresy- 
hunt ; hence the many Lollard trials of the reign of 
Henry V. Now we know that in the original version of 
the play, Falstaff was called Oldcastle, and Sir John 
Oldcastle was the greatest of all Lollard leaders. 

The fact of his imprisonment was simply a historic 



i6 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

fact, and the audience knew well enough the reasons for 
it ; the historic Henry had strained himself to the utmost 
in the effort to save his old friend from the ire of enraged 
ecclesiastics, and, even when he was imprisoned, had 
tried to persuade him to recant. How could the 
audience think Henry severe when they knew that the true 
offence was a political one, and that a continuance of the 
friendship on Henry's part would have brought down 
the dynasty ? Surely this sheds a different light on 
Henry ? 

It also throws light on other portions of the play. 
Falstaff repeatedly claims a great reputation for military 
skill, a European reputation in fact, for he says that he 
is '* Sir John to all Europe." Now a good many critics 
treat this as simple absurdity on his part, but it is perfectly 
accurate ; Oldcastle was acknowledged as one of the greatest 
soldiers of his day. Whether Shakespeare meant him to 
deserve his reputation or not is an entirely different point, 
but he certainly possessed it. Canon Ainger has shown 
that a great deal in the character of Falstaff can be ex- 
plained by the fact that the Elizabethan conception of 
him was that of a renegade Puritan, and it is surely equally 
appropriate to remember that he had the reputation 
of being a great soldier. That is the joke of the battle 
of Shrewsbury.^ That is precisely why he is able to 
claim, with any hope of credence, that he killed Hotspur, 
and that is preceisely why Sir John Colevile of the Dale 
surrenders to his reputation only. 2 

In all these cases the historic method helps us, I think, 
very markedly to understand the plays in question ; 
1 Henry I V., Part I. « Henry IV., Part II. 



Introduction i^ 

on the other hand, we are bound to admit that, if we 
study the pecuhar point of view of the EUzabethan mind, 
problems are often suggested where all might otherwise 
to the modern reader appear plain. It seems to me, 
however, that it is at least equally necessary to study the 
problems which thus arise. How can we be sure that 
we understand him fully if we ignore the manner in which 
his plays and his subjects were likely to affect contem- 
porary minds ? I will give two instances where important 
problems suggest themselves which have not, I think, 
as yet been resolved. 

Let us consider, for instance, the identity of Lear. 
Lear appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth as the king who 
founded the city of Leicester, and it is ultimately, though 
not directly, from Geoffrey of Monmouth that Shake- 
speare's version of the story is derived. Shakespeare 
has, however, altered the conclusion and linked the whole 
with an entirely different tale — the history of Gloucester 
and his sons — whose source is Sidney's Arcadia. Now 
Lear is not only a character in Geoffrey of Monmouth ; 
he is also an important figure in Welsh mythology where 
his daughter — Cordelia — has as rival wooers Modred 
and Gwynn ap Nudd, the prince of fairyland ; these 
two are doomed to fight for her every first of May until 
the Day of Judgment. 

In Irish mythology also Lear or Lir plays an important 
part, and his children are turned into wild swans. 

Now what is Lear's real identity ? 

Sir John Rhys states that Lir is a Celtic sea-god ; 
Mr Timothy Lewis tells me that he thinks this a mistake, 
that Lir is a noun used as an adjective and means the 

B 



1 8 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

Ligurian Sea only, but not any other : Lear or Lir really 
means the Ligures tribes ; there were a number of such 
personages in ancient Welsh ; they are called the fathers 
of the British race, and they really mean the invading 
tribes from the Continent. 

Now it may not be of importance to our Shakespearian 
study to know what Lear really and essentially is ; but 
it is surely of considerable importance to know what the 
Elizabethans thought he was. 

Was Lear a man or a god or a tribe ? This question 
is not even asked. The majority of critics are like 
Mr Bradley, they start with the assumption that Lear 
was an ancient British king, and they do not even discuss 
the possibility that the Elizabethans understood Lear as 
a mythologic figure and that Shakespeare himself may 
have meant him as something mythologic. 

Mr Bradley's omission to ask the question is the more 
curious because he himself admits that Lear produces 
on his mind the impression of being strangely remote 
from ordinary life ; the tale, as such, is extravagantly 
improbable and yet the drama is enormously great. 

" This world," says Mr Bradley, " is called Britain ; 
but we should no more look for it than for the place 
called Caucasus, where Prometheus was chained by 
Strength and Force and comforted by the daughters of 
Ocean." 

And elsewhere he says that he finds that he is often 
grouping the play in his own mind " with works like the 
Prometheus Vtnctus, and the Divine Comedy and even 
with the greatest symphonies of Beethoven and the statues 
in the Medici Chapel." 



Introduction 19 

In other words, the play makes an impression closely 
resembling that of mythologic symbolism. Very well ! 
is it not possible that Shakespeare's audience would have 
conceived Lear as a figure in mythology ? 

Or consider Othello as another case where the EHza- 
bethan point of view very naturally suggests a problem. 
From Coleridge to Mr Bradley most of our critics assume 
that Othello is meant to be a noble character. 

Mr Bradley says : " This character is so noble, Othello's 
actions and feehng follow so inevitably from it — and 
his sufferings are so heartrending that he stirs I believe, 
in most readers, a passion of mingled love and pity which 
they feel for no other hero in Shakespeare." 

Now, it is impossible to deny that this " noble " person 
commits great crimes ; he murders an innocent and 
devoted wife, and plans the murder of a loyal friend ; it 
is quite true that Cassio's assassination is averted, but 
that is sheer accident ; it is not owing to any repentance 
in Othello, and Othello remains morally guilty of two 
murders, both of innocent people. 

These are undeniably great crimes ; still the whole 
tendency of our modern criticism is to lay all the stress 
upon lago's villainy and to regard Othello as being almost 
wholly a victim. But now let us make one enquiry ! 
Such a subject is, in itself, an excellent dramatic subject, 
and it is easy enough to understand Shakespeare's choice. 
But why if it be really his intention to show us an innocent 
noble husband driven to the murder of an innocent wife, 
why does he commence with making his hero a Moor ? 
The audience of the sixteenth century had an intense 
prejudice against Moors, a prejudice at least as strong as 



20 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

an audience of to-day would have against Prussian 
officers. 

The Moors were, in the sixteenth century, the most 
formidable opponents of Christian Europe ; their valour 
had threatened its complete overthrow, and since they 
were heathen and formidable opponents at one and the 
same time, they were regarded as the accepted types of 
villainy. We see this in the second book of Spenser's 
Faerie Queene, where the three Saracens are the most 
formidable opponents of the knight Guyon ; we see it in 
Shakespeare's own Titus Andronicus where the Moor is 
represented as absolutely black, and also a villain of the 
most dreadful type. 

Even modern critics like Coleridge and Charles Lamb 
feel a distinct repulsion. Coleridge argues that Othello 
cannot have been really black, but must have been brown ; 
I need not repeat his arguments, for every one knows 
them, and they are all contradicted by the simple fact 
that Shakespeare makes the Moor Aaron absolutely 
black. 

Then, again, Charles Lamb says that he prefers Othello 
for reading rather than for representation on the stage, 
because on the stage his black face alienates the sympathy 
of the audience. Of course it does. But the prejudice 
excited in Charles Lamb's mind must have been as nothing 
compared to the prejudices excited in the minds of an 
Elizabethan audience for whom a Moor's black face w^as 
simply the accepted symbol for the villainy of a Moor's 
black soul. 

Try and imagine a dramatic author of to-day doing 
anything really comparable ! Try and imagine him 



Introduction 21 

representing a hero who murders an innocent wife and 
attempts the murder of an innocent friend ; supposing 
that, notwithstanding these dreadful facts, he wishes to 
awaken the utmost sympathy for the murderous hero. 
Will be begin by making his hero a Prussian officer ? Of 
course not ! Our dramatist knows perfectly well that 
his audience have a prejudice against Prussian officers 
of the intensest possible kind, that they will certainly, 
from the very outset, consider the hero a villain and that 
they will certainly, from the very outset, expect him to 
do something unjust and abominable. Surely no 
dramatist would so far stultify his own dramatic intention ? 

And yet even the case of the Prussian officer is not 
strong enough, for it does not include the colour bar. 
Imagine a Prussian officer who is also a negro, and imagine 
the play acted before an audience of Southern State 
Americans ! And that the parallel is really true and really 
just anyone can see by simply referring to Shakespeare's 
source. In Cinthio's novel the conclusion drawn is 
exactly the one that might have been expected ; the 
noble Venetian lady marries the Moor, notwithstanding 
the prohibition of her parents, and the result is what 
might have been anticipated — a cruel murder. 

Now, how do our critics get out of this difficulty ? 
They never meet it fairly. They simply assume, like 
Mr Bradley, that Shakespeare was gloriously original, 
gloriously in advance of his age. This, when we consider 
the character of the viUainous Moor Aaron seems very 
doubtful ; but, even supposing Shakespeare were free 
from the prejudices of his age, was his mtdience free ? 
That is the real crux of the whole matter. Mr Bradley 



22 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

admits that even Coleridge could not rise to the " full 
glory " of Shakespeare's conception. How, then, does 
Mr Bradley think the Elizabethan audience could rise 
to it ? Were they less free from race prejudice than 
Coleridge, the devotee of the rights of man ? 

Moreover, the whole difficulty was so needless ! As- 
suming that all Shakespeare wished to do was to write 
a story of love and murderous jealousy, he could have 
easily found scores and scores of such tales which were 
intrinsically better material than Cinthio's novel. The 
one thing that is peculiar about Cinthio's novel is the fact 
that the hero is a Moor ; in other words, Shakespeare 
chose precisely the story which included the one thing 
likely to wreck his dramatic effect at the outset. Is this 
probable ? 

Is it not possible that Othello is really meant to be a 
villain, and that his great qualities are like the great 
qualities of Macbeth — things which do not prevent the 
rest of the man from being evil ? 

At any rate the difficulty should be fairly answered, 
and I submit that we cannot do this without a most 
careful historic study. 

Moreover, as soon as we take the Ehzabethan point of 
view, another question at once suggests itself. Are we 
justified in interpreting Shakespeare, as completely as 
we do, from a modern psychological standpoint ? 

It is quite true that every era which is interested in 
human nature must have its own method of psychology ; 
but this psychology also has its historical development 
and the method of one age differs considerably from the 
method of another. 



Introduction 23 

Let anyone who doubts this take the simplest of tests. 
Let him turn to Pope, who explains his own psychology 
in the Moral Essays, The Essay on Man, and elsewhere. 
The virtue of human life depends on a right balance 
between passion and reason and, according to him, the 
key to character is to be found in the '* ruHng passion " — 
to discover a man's ruling passion is to know him. Now, 
Pope's own method of character-drawing depends on 
his own psychology, and is to be explained by that 
psychology ; but it is quite obsolete for us. Who now 
thinks of the " ruling passion " as the key to a man's 
character ? 

But if the method of the Queen Anne period is so far 
obsolete, should we not expect the method of the Eliza- 
bethans to be more obsolete still ? 

Let us take an Elizabethan example in Ben Jonson's 
Comedy of Humours. 

This is how Mr Gregory Smith explains Jonson's psy- 
chology : ^ "In the older physiology the four major 
humours, corresponding with the four elements — formed 
according to their proportionate allowances in each body — 
the " temperament " or '* complexion " or " constitu- 
tion " of a man, and declared his character. Variations 
in the relative strength of these humours disclosed the 
individual differences. These differences might be great 
or small in respect of one or more of the contributing 
humours. By simple arithmetic it was easy to show 
that great odds were against any two men having the 
same formula of temperament ; and so the theory fitted 
itself comfortably to experience." 
^ Ben Jonson. 



24 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

Now, this was the psychology of one of Shakespeare's 
own contemporaries. If Ben Jonson's psychology was, 
to our own thinking, as extraordinary as this, what was 
Shakespeare's psychology ? Surely we ought to explain 
his method ? Pope's interpretation of character depends 
upon the theory of the ruling passion, which he regards 
as the key to it. Ben Jonson's interpretation of character 
depends upon " humours." Both these methods are 
obsolete for us. Are our critics likely to be right when 
they represent Shakespeare almost entirely as if he were 
a modern psychologist writing plays, instead of novels. 
This is really what Mr Bradley does. He interprets 
Shakespeare from the psychological standpoint, but 
without once explaining what Shakespeare's psychology 
really was ; he assumes that it was like our own, but to 
do so is surely to throw Shakespeare out of the line of 
his historic development. 

There must have been differences. What were they ? 
Not even a genius like Shakespeare can anticipate a 
method three centuries ahead of his own, and even if he 
had possessed such a truly outstanding gift of prophecy, 
we are only once more " up against " our main problem, 
the mentality of the audience ; his audience could not 
possibly have understood him. 

The older editors of Shakespeare — Malone, for instance 
— do often see historical parallels. It was Coleridge 
who set the fashion of treating Shakespeare mainly from 
a psychological standpoint ; this was natural enough, 
for Coleridge was himself mainly a psychologist, and as 
he himself admits, possessed very little historic sense ; 
we may add that, in addition, there was very httle 



Introduction 25 

historical material available. It is, however, somewhat 
surprising that, as the historical material became 
available, it was not more generally employed. Thus 
Mr Bradley (whom I quote so often, because he has 
carried this method to its farthest point), considers 
Shakespeare as almost entirely detached from his time 
and age ; the four great tragedies might almost have 
been written in the Age of Pericles or the period of 
the Romantic Revival for all the intimate and vital 
relation that Mr Bradley perceives between them and 
their own age. 

But is this probable ? 

We thus arrive at two very starthng conclusions. 
One is that Shakespeare, though perhaps more interested 
in human nature than any man who has ever hved, wrote 
with almost complete indifference to his own era ; and 
this in spite of the fact that we know the Ehzabethan 
stage was continually and closely associated with poUtics, 
and that Shakespeare's own company twice earned the 
displeasure of authority on account of Shakespeare's 
own plays, iwo'^ of which were certainl}^ represented as 
having important political bearings. 

The other is the equally startling conclusion that 
Shakespeare can be best interpreted by nineteenth- 
century psychology, not a sixteenth-century psychology 
(for that would probably have to be as obsolete as Ben 
Jonson's) ; but just precisely a nineteenth-century 
psychology. 

Surely these results are very curious ? 

But, it will be asked, if Shakespeare's greatest characters 
^ Henry IV. and Richard II. 



26 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

are not predominantly psychological, in our sense of 
the term, what can they be ? 

Let me take an illustration. 

Suppose we consider again Shakespeare's Lear, and 
compare it with four allied characters, four characters 
who have much in common with him, choosing two from 
ancient, and two from modern literature. Suppose we 
compare Lear with (Edipus and Priam on the one side, and 
on the other, with Turgenieff's Lear of the Steppes, and 
Balzac's Pere Goriot. With which group has Lear most in 
common ? To me it seems obvious that he has most in 
common with (Edipus and Priam. And Mr Bradley, 
when he compares Lear to the Prometheus Vinctus, is 
feeling the same effect that I feel. But (Edipus and 
Priam are characters in Greek mythology, whereas 
Turgenieff's Lear and Pere Goriot are the characters of 
modern psychological realists. 

Be it observed that it is not simply a question of genius, 
for the same hand which drew Lear also drew Nym, Pistol, 
and Bardolph ; but these latter belong quite plainly to 
the Comedy of Humours, they are psychology in the 
sixteenth-century {i.e. Jonsonian) sense of the term ; 
but they do not produce at all the same effect as Lear. 

What, it may again be asked, is the essential difference 
between mythology and psychology ? Well, it seems to 
me that there are two differences which go to the root 
of the matter ! 

One is that the modern psychologist aims especially 
at the realistic portraits of individuals. He aims at 
giving you the sort of man you might meet anywhere, and 
this is what, when successful, he does. We all feel that 



Introduction 27 

Turgenieff' s Lear and Balzac's Pere Goriot are individuals 
whom the authors might actually have met, and probably 
did meet. They are people of common life. 

But do we feel that (Edipus and Priam are people of 
common hfe ? On the contrary. The poets wish to 
convey the impression that there is something in their 
heroes which is more than ordinary ; they are not merely 
ordinary individuals, they are something above and 
over. When Hermes visits Priam he compliments the 
old man on his great dignity and compares him to the 
immortal gods ; " divine Priam " is one of Homer's 
most constant epithets. 

Now, if Hermes had ever met Lear he might have paid 
him the same compliment. Surely there is something 
exceptional and almost superhuman in the greatest 
figures of Shakespeare ? Do they produce the effect 
of being ordinary or even extraordinary individuals ? 
Does history record any man quite as pathetic as Lear, or 
quite as interesting as Hamlet ? And even Lord Bacon 
does not seem as wise as Prospero. Read his biography, 
and place it side by side with Shakespeare's Prospero, 
and see. 

Has not Shakespeare himself hinted that his figures 
are partly mythologic and partly symbolic when he 
withdraws them so far from the everyday world. Why 
is Prospero placed in a magic island ? Why are Hamlet 
and Macbeth and Lear all withdrawn into a remote and 
almost legendary past ? Even Othello, who is much more 
Hke an ordinary human being, is still set apart as if he 
were a symbolic figure by his blackness. 

The second great difference between the mythologist 



28 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

and the psychologist is that the latter is not fundamentally 
historical, whereas the former is., The modern psy- 
chologist is pre-eminently an egoist and an individualist : 
he choses subjects mainly because they interest him, 
and all the importance they receive for others will be 
due to Jiis method of treatment. In other words, as 
Hazlitt says of Wordsworth, he does not wish to share 
his own importance even with his subject. Flaubert, 
for instance, chooses in Madame Bovary an unimportant 
and almost trivial heroine ; all the interest is lent by his 
method of treatment. 

The mj^thologist, on the other hand, deals with the 
matter which is traditional, which is a part of national 
history and which, as such, is already interesting to his 
audience as in the case of the Greek dramatists whose 
material is chosen from certain definite historic cycles. 

Now, in this respect, Shakespeare and his fellows seem 
to offer a curious half-way house. Some of their subjects 
— such as Lear and Macbeth — are genuinely traditional 
in the Greek sense ; others — such as Othello — are derived 
from known sources but are not exactly traditional. 

Now, if Shakespeare be truly a psychologic realist, it is 
exceedingly difficult to see why he did not invent his own 
plots. To economise labour is the usual reply — he took 
what was to hand to save himself trouble. Yes ! But 
the method which he actually did adopt was one which 
saved him no labour whatever, not, at least, in the majority 
of cases. 

As anyone can see by comparing the two together, 
Shakespeare always reconstructs his source, and often 
alters it almost beyond recognition. In the case of Leai', 



Introduction 29 

for instance, the original story ended happily, so far, 
at any rate, as Lear himself was concerned ; the good 
daughter — Cordelia — restored him to his kingdom, and 
he reigned in peace until his death. 

This is the version as we find it in practically all the 
Elizabethan sources ; Geoffrey of Monmouth, Hohnshed, 
The Mirror jor Magistrates, Spenser's Faerie Queene, 
etc, etc. 

Moreover, in the original story, there was no Gloucester, 
no Edmund, no Edgar, all these figures come from a 
totally different source in Sidney's Arcadia, and they 
alter the whole bias of the plot. Why not recognise 
that the resulting story is really a new thing, and call it 
by a new name ? 

Surely we find ourselves here on the horns of a very 
curious dilemma ! Does Shakespeare choose the subject 
of King Lear, as Coleridge says he did, because it was 
already endeared to the minds of his audience ? Quite 
possibly ! 

But, if so, why does he alter it so amazingly, for there 
is nothing, as a rule, which people more resent than an 
unfamiliar ending to a familiar tale ? 

Moreover, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Lear does not strip 
himself entirely ; he retains a certain portion of his 
kingdom for himself, and it is to gain this portion that 
Goneril and Regan make war upon him. Thus, in the 
original tale, Lear, Goneril and Regan are all of them 
more intelligible in their actions than they are in Shake- 
speare. But why take an improbable plot, and then 
proceed to make it still more improbable by your method 
of treatment ? 



30 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

The case is even more curious when we turn to compare 
Hamlet with its source. 

In the original Amleth saga there is no ghost, no Polonius, 
no Opheha, no Laertes ; the Polonius and Laertes story 
simply does not exist in the Amleth saga, and the ending 
is totally different, for the prince conquers his opponents, 
gets himself happily married to an EngUsh princess, and 
succeeds triumphantly to his father's throne. When he 
has killed his uncle he makes a speech to the assembled 
people : " It is I who have wiped off my country's 
shame ; I who have quenched my mother's dishonour ; 
I who have beaten back oppression ; I who have put 
to death the murderer ; I who have baffled the artful 
hand of my uncle with retorted arts. Were he Uving, 
each new day would have multiplied his crimes. I 
resented the wrong done to father and to fatherland : 
I slew him who was governing you outrageously, 
and more hardly than beseemed men. Acknowledge 
my service, honour my wit, give me the throne if I 
have earned it." 

Amleth makes a long speech to this effect, and the 
conclusion of the whole matter is : 

" Every heart had been moved while the young man 
thus spoke ; he affected some to compassion, and some 
even to tears. When the lamentation ceased, he was 
appointed king by general acclaim." 

Moreover, the character of the hero is quite different 
for the hero of the Amleth saga never hesitates over 
his vengeance, but pursues it with undeviating energy. 
It is just because he does show such a magnificent 
combination of energy and subtlety that the people 



Introduction 31 

choose him as king. In fact, we should hardly know 
that Hamlet was supposed to be drawn from the Amleth 
saga, were it not for the similarity of the names, and 
for the fact, that, in each case, the hero is a Prince of 
Denmark. 

Why retain the names when they mean so little ? Why 
not acknowledge that the story is new ? 

In the case of Hamlet, at any rate, I shall endeavour 
to answer the question in the following pages. 

I would sum up as follows : 

(i) Shakespeare wrote his plays for a definite audience 
at a definite point of time. We know the period at which 
the plays were written, and we know, within a few years, 
the dates of the greater number. It should, therefore, be 
possible to discover with more or less accuracy what 
the plays would mean for their intended audience, and 
we cannot be sure that we comprehend them fully until 
we study the point of view of this audience. 

(2) The point of view of an Elizabethan audience can 
only be understood by means of a careful study of the 
history of the time which should, therefore, be an integral 
part of the study of the plays. 

(3) It is possible that we interpret Shakespeare too 
purely from a psychological standpoint ; in any case, 
the psychology of the sixteenth century is bound to differ 
from that of the nineteenth century, and it is important 
to show in what its differences consist. 

I propose to apply this new method, as fully and as 
carefully as I can, in the case of Hamlet. 

My one aim throughout will be to get the point of view 
of the Elizabethan audience and to make out, as far as 



32 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

I can, what the play would mean to them, and what they 
would be likely to see in it. 

I feel sure that the method is vaUd, though the results 
obtained from it certainly differ greatly from any of my 
own preconceived ideas. 



CHAPTER I 

RICHARD II. AND HAMLET 

The date of Hamlet is uncertain, but a careful examina- 
tion of the evidence suggests that Shakespeare's first 
sketch of the play was written in 1601, and that this was 
expanded into the final form in 1603-4. It seems likely 
that Shakespeare wrote his first draft in 1601, while the 
Lord Chamberlain's men were travelling because they 
were for the time being out of favour at Court on account 
of their connection with the Essex conspiracy ; this is 
apparently referred to in the allusion to the "inhibition 
of the players to perform in the city owing to the late 
innovation." ^ 

The whole question of Richard II. is so closely bound 
up with that of Hamlet, that it is necessary to dwell upon 
it here at some length. It will show us, for one thing, how 
intimately Shakespeare's company and he himself were 
connected with poHtical matters through the medium 
of Shakespeare's own plays, and it will show us also how 
material which might in itself seem innocent was regularly 
adapted to political purposes. 

In the year 1596 the Pope published a bull empowering 

Ehzabeth's own subjects to depose her. The queen 

knew that there was much discontent with her policy ; 

Essex was an exceedingly popular and exceedingly gifted 

^ See Boas, Shakespeare and His Predecessors. 

C ^ 



34 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

soldier, and his enemies insinuated to the queen that he 
aimed at deposing her, and seizing the crown for himself. 
Now Richard II. was a king who had been deposed, and 
the Essex partisans were suspected of using his fate as a 
kind of symbol of what Essex intended with Ehzabeth. 
The queen and her advisers revealed continual nervous- 
ness on this subject. 

On July nth, 1600,^ interrogations and notes were 
presented by Attorney-General Coke on Dr Haywarde's 
book on Richard II. in proof 

" that the Doctor selected a story 200 years old and published 
it last year intending the application of it to this time, the 
plot being that of a king who is taxed for misgovernment and 
his counsel for corrupt and covetous dealings for private 
ends ; the king is censured for conferring benefits on hated 
favourites, the nobles become discontented and the commons 
groan under continual taxation, whereupon the king is 
deposed and in the end murdered." 

Haywarde (it is stated) confessed that he had altered 
history in certain respects to suit his purposes ; as, for 
instance, having heard of a benevolence under Richard III. 
he transferred it to Richard II. 

July 2ist, 1600. Essex admitted his treason. 

"He permitted underhand that treasonable book of Henry IV. 
to be printed and published ; it being plainly deciphered, not 
only by the matter and by the epistle itself ; for what end 
and for whose behalf it was made, but also the Earl himself 
being so often present at the playing thereof - and with great 
applause giving countenance to it." 

January 22nd, 1601. The examination of Dr Haywarde 
showed how repeatedly he had altered his book. 

^ Calendar of State Papers, Green. 

* This was, apparently, Shakespeare's play. 



Richard II. and Hamlet 35 

" Read in Bodires and other authors that the subject 
was bound to the state rather than to the person of the 
King ; inserted it as spoken by the Earl of Derby and Duke 
of Hereford to serve his own turn . . . did not invent the 
Earl's speech as it is, but found it somewhere. Set forth the 
oration of the Bishop of Canterbury according to matter 
found in other authorities and cannot affirm that he found 
these eight stories in any oration the Archbishop made • 
but it is lawful for an historian so to do. 

" Confesses that it is his own speech that it was not amiss in 
regard of the Commonwealth that King Richard II. was dead 
because it prevented civil war through two competitors . . . 
asked where he found the description of the Earl . . . says 
that he found in Hall and others that he was of popular 
behaviour, but for the particulars he took the liberty of the 
best writers. 

•' Gathered the description of the Earl out of his actions ; 
found the matter but not the form of the words." 

Haywarde's book was dedicated to Essex in terms 
which in themselves suggested suspicions : the dedication 
ran : 

" Roberto Comiti Essexise . . . Vicecomiti Herefordiae " 
" cujus nomen si Henrici nostri fronte radiaret, ipse e latior 
et tutior in vulgus prodiret Magnus siquidem es et presenti 
judicio et futuri temporis expectatione : in quo, veluti re- 
cuperasse non oculos caeca prius fortuna videri potest." 

The phrase about his future greatness was taken as 
referring to an expectation of the kingship. 

The same book was referred to by Sir Robert Cecil, at 
the Essex trial, February 13th, 1601 ^ : 

" He {i.e. Essex) conspired with Tyrone that Tyrone should 
land in England with an Irish army . . . these things ap- 
peared by the book written on Henry IV., making this time 

^ State Papers, Green. 



36 Hamiet and the Scottish Succession 

seem like that of Richard II., to be by him as by Henry IV. 
deposed. . . . He would have removed her Majesty's servants, 
stepped into her chair and perhaps had her treated like 
Richard II." 

And again : 

** He came over from Ireland so unexpectedly to remove 
such from the Queen as he misliked, and could not bend to 
his traitorous faction ; then Tyrone and he were to join their 
forces and by destroying her Majesty Essex to be made King 
of England." 

The same book is once more made important evidence 
against Essex in the " Directions to Preachers " given on 
February 14th : 

" Two years since a history of Henry IV. was printed and 
published wherein all the complaints and slanders which 
have been given out by seditious traitors against the Govern- 
ment, both in England and Ireland, are set down and falsely 
attributed to those times, thereby cunningly insinuating that 
the same abuses being now in this realm that were in the 
days of Richard II., the like course might be taken for 
redress. . . . 

"The Earl confessed that he kept the copy with him 14 
days, plotting how he might become another Henry IV. . . . 

" If he had not been prevented there had never been a 
rebellion in England since Richard II. more desperate and 
dangerous. ..." 

James Knowle said he had agreed with Tyrone that 
Tyrone should be king of Ireland and Essex of England.^ 

Now, Shakespeare's company were almost as much 
involved as Dr Haywarde in the dispute over Richard II., 
as is shown by the examination of Augustine Phillips 
(February i8th) ; Phillips is described as a servant to 
the Lord Chamberlain, and was therefore certainly a 
^ State Papers, Green. 



Richard II. and Hamlet 37 

member of Shakespeare's company. "On Thursday or 

Friday seven-night," runs the deposition, 

" Sir Charles Percy, Sir Josceline Percy, Lord Mounteagle and 
several others spoke to some of the players to play the 
deposing and killing of King Richard and promised to give 
them 40 shillings more than their ordinary to do so. 

Examinate and his fellows had determined to play some 
other play, holding that of King Richard as being so old and 
so long out of use that they should have a small company at 
it, but at this request they were content to play it." 

Not only did they play it, but they went on playing it 
some forty times in all during the whole period of the 
trial and execution. Wyndham says in this connection : 

" Theatres were then, as newspapers are now, the cock-pits 
of religious and literary contention. . . . 

" The City Councillors could well, had they so minded, have 
prevented the performance of Richard II., with his deposition 
and death some ' forty times ' in open streets and houses, as 
Elizabeth complained ; and indeed it is hard to account for 
the Queen's sustained irritation at this drama save on the 
ground of its close association with her past fears of Essex- 
Months after the Earl's execution she exclaimed to Lambard ' 
' I am Richard the Second, know ye not that ? ' 

" Shakespeare's colleagues, acting Shakespeare's plays, gave 
umbrage to Essex's political opponents in Henry I V., applauded 
his ambition in Henry V., and were accessories to his dis- 
loyalty in Richard II." ^ 

Shakespeare's company having incurred the serious dis- 
pleasure of the queen, did not perform at Court, Christmas 
1601-2, and it was during the period of their disgrace that, 
according to Mr Boas,^ Hamlet was most probably produced. 

Three things become at once obvious when we consider 
the above facts carefully. 

^ Poems of Shakespeare. 

2 Shakespeare and His Predecessors. 



38 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

(i) That seemingly innocent subjects might be used, 
and, apparently, were often used, as in the case of 
Richard 11. , with a direct political bearing. 

(2) That Shakespeare's company were twice accused ^ 
of using plays — Henry IV., Richard II. — for pohtical 
purposes. 

(3) That, in each case, the dramatic author involved 
was Shakespeare himself. 

Now, what was the reply of Essex's friends to the 
accusation that he had intended to emulate Henry of 
Lancaster and make himself King of England ? The 
answer was that Essex was an impassioned partisan of 
James I. and of the Scottish succession, and that he had 
fallen a martyr to the cause of James. Let us examine 
the political situation a little more closely in order to see 
how this came about. Let us endeavour to place ourselves 
in the exact position of an Elizabethan audience when 
the play of Hamlet was produced. 

During the last years of Elizabeth's reign the great 
problem of practical politics lay in the succession to the 
throne. The queen was visibly growing feeble ; she 
hated any mention of a successor ; but it was obvious 
that, in the ordinary course of nature, her life could 
not last much longer. The Tudor policy had been to 
concentrate power in the hands of the monarchy, and, 
therefore, the character of the so^'ereign was all powerful 
in determining the future of the realm. 

Foreign politics presented many points of extreme 
difficulty ; Spain was still a most powerful and dangerous 
foe, continually plotting new Armadas : there was a plot 

^ See Introduction. 



Richard II. and Hamlet 39 

for a landing at Mi] ford Haven in the very year of the 
queen's death, 1603.^ 

At no period in Enghsh history had the character of 
the monarch been more important, and in no single 
instance had the succession been so doubtful and men's 
minds so hopelessly distracted. 

James of Scotland was, undoubtedly, the person who 
had 'the best title to the crown, but there were many 
reasons against him ; he had been set aside, somewhat 
unaccountably, by the will of Henry VHI. in favour of 
a younger branch ; he was a Scot, and, as such, might 
be considered ineligible ; by English law no Scottish 
subject could inherit landed property in England, not 
even the smallest estate ; how then, the lawyers argued, 
could a Scot inherit the throne ? ^ 

There was also a considerable amount of prejudice 
against Scotland simply as a country. 

" It is difficult," says Mr Martin Hume, " for Englishmen in 
these times to conceive the distrust and disHke then entertained 
for Scotchmen. They were, of course, foreigners and had for 
centuries been more or less closely allied to France, the 
secular enemy of England ; their country was poor and a 
large portion of it in semi-savagery." ^ 

The Protestantism of Scotland was, naturally, a feature 
in its favour ; the English had vehemently taken the side 
of Murray and his Protestant lords as against the queen ; 
the English populace embraced the cause of Murray far 
more ardently than Elizabeth herself ; they espoused 
absolutely the cause of the Scottish lords, and when the 

^ Martin Hume, Philip II. (Cambridge Modern History, IH.). 

2 Burton. 

^ Sir Walter Ralegh- 



40 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

Scottish lords commissioned the historian — Buchanan — ^to 
defend their actions, the English populace probably 
accepted as accurate every word of his terrific indictment. 

English sentiment was, on the whole, strongly in 
favour of James of Scotland ; he was the natural heir, 
and notwithstanding all prejudices against Scotland, there 
was an obvious and great advantage to be gained by 
uniting the whole island under one rule. The partisans 
of James very naturally pointed out the immense benefits 
that would accrue from the union of the crowns, and 
especially the great increase of safety to England herself. 

It is worthy of note that those plays of Shakespeare 
which are obviously connected with Essex are also plays 
which all lay stress on the unity of Britain. Thus, in 
Henry V., he pays an open and daring compliment to 
Essex,^ then in Ireland, and it is also in Henry V. that 
he introduces, obviously as symbols of national unity, 
the four soldiers drawn from the four quarters of Britain : 
Gower the Englishman, Fluellen the Welshman, Macmorris 
the Irishman, and Jamy the Scotchman. This would be 
absurdly impossible in the time of the actual Henry V. ; 
but it represents the exact ideal at which the partisans 
of the Scottish succession were aiming when the play was 
written. The same thing may be said of the famous 
speech of the dying John of Gaunt in Richard II. : 

" This royal throne of kings, this scepter 'd isle 

This fortress built by Nature for herself 
Against infection and the hand of war." 

English sentiment was, for these reasons, strongly in 

1 Act v., Chorus. 



Richard II. and Hamlet 41 

favour of James of Scotland ; but it could not be said to be 
unanimous ; there were the legal difficulties in the way, and 
a further difficulty lay in the character of James himself. 

James' character had, or seemed to have, many ad- 
mirable traits ; but it was a baffling and a difficult one. 
He had a great reputation for learning, and for interest 
in philosophy and theology ; he was mild and merciful 
by temperament, sternness and cruelty were far from 
him ; he hated bloodshed, and he was the least revengeful 
of men ; no trait in him was more marked than his 
reluctance to punish even when punishment seemed just 
and necessary, and most of the odium he incurred in hfc 
was on account of this very reluctance. His whole tone 
of mind was serious and reflective, and, though he was 
often coarse in his language, he was exempt from the 
grosser vices. 

On the other hand, he was totally unlike the Tudor 
sovereigns with their love of pleasure, their bonhomie, 
their frank willingness to mingle with all classes of their 
subjects. He was melancholy and retiring ; he had one 
confidant in the Earl of Mar, his fellow-pupil under 
Buchanan — in whom he seemed to repose implicit trust ; 
but to the majority of men he was inaccessible and difficult. 
He loved seclusion in a way almost incomprehensible to 
people accustomed to the bustling and vigorous tempera- 
ment of the Tudors. 

His political position was, and always had been, one of 
extraordinary difficulty ; with his father murdered, his 
mother in lifelong imprisonment, and his country full of 
factious, partisan nobles, there seems to have been no 
one, except possibly Mar, whom he could intimately 



42 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

trust. His weapons in these circumstances were a baffling 
subtlety, a habit of verbal fence, a passion for keeping 
his own counsel which went so far that he was at times 
suspected of insanity. His position made him a very- 
close student of men and manners, for his very existence 
depended on the care and accuracy of his judgment ; 
almost all his Stuart predecessors had met premature 
deaths, several by assassination, and he only escaped a 
similar fate by his reticence and subtlety, his genius for 
evasion. All his life he prided himself on his knowledge 
of human nature, his power of judging character at a 
glance, and so far as his youth was concerned, he had 
apparently exercised that knowledge with considerable 
skill ; at an}^ rate he preserved himself from a premature 
death which was more than any of his Stuart predecessors 
had done. 

His melancholy, his love of seclusion, his baffling 
subtlety, the occasional doubts of his sanity might all 
be explained by the difficulties of his position, and by 
the shifts to which he was put in extricating himself from 
such serious perils. 

His extraordinary carelessness and untidiness in dress, 
which revolted many observers, might possibly be set 
down to a similar cause. 

More serious defects, however, suggested themselves, 
the most fatal being, apparently, a singular vacillation 
and weakness of will. The Tudors had been, above all, 
strong and vigorous statesmen ; they were powerful 
rulers ; their will-power and determination ranked with 
their popularity among their chief assets. But James 
seemed incapable of strong and effective action ; he 



Richard II. and Hamlet 43 

allowed the younger Bothwell to usurp power and 
practically make himself the master of Scotland while 
he, James, stood aside in comparative retirement ; the 
younger Bothwell held him in a kind of duresse vile, and 
James made no effective protest. 

Anyone who will read the correspondence of Elizabeth 
and James will see how continually the queen reproaches 
him for these defects of character ; he knows very well, 
she maintains, that his subjects destroy his royal authority, 
and even plot against his life ; but he does not execute 
justice. It is right to be merciful; but when mercy 
shows itself as complaisance towards villains and 
scoundrels, then mercy itself becomes a weakness. 

It is his duty as a king to defend his realm against 
evil doers, to execute justice, and to punish rebels ; his 
realm is a mass of disorder; it proceeds from bad to 
worse, and it is his fault because he does not punish where 
punishment is due. So long as violence is allowed to 
flourish, there can be no security in a kingdom. Elizabeth 
reiterates these charges again and again, in different 
epistles and in various ways. And James hardly defends 
himself. He practically admits that the indictment is 
just ; he sees what he ought to do, but he cannot do it ; 
he knows very well that the times are out of joint, but 
he does not feel himself vigorous enough to set them 
right; he cannot assume the necessary severity. The 
queen accuses him continually of vacillation and delay ; 
he knows what he ought to do, why does he not do it ? 
And James can only reply by admitting the procrasti- 
nation and acknowledging the delay. From the Tudor 
point of view, this vacillation of will and this procrastina- 



44 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

tion were precisely the qualities most dangerous to a 
monarch and most likely to be fatal to his people. 

We, in these later days, inevitably consider James I. 
and VI. from what we know of his history on the English 
throne ; it is prosperity, as Bacon says, which really tries 
a man ; but the James who was known to the Elizabethans 
in the year 1601 was almost precisely the James described 
above ; there is not a single trait which has not complete 
warrant in the Scottish historians or in his own corres- 
pondence with Elizabeth.^ 

We must also remember the fact that the Scottish 
monarch had a special connection with Denmark ; his 
queen — Anne — was a princess of Denmark ; he himself 
had brought her home in a romantic voyage ; there were 
Danes resident at the Scottish court. Moreover, the 
murderer of James' father, the elder Bothwell, had also 
taken refuge in Denmark and had ended his Ufe imprisoned 
there. 

This, then, was the pohtical situation at the exact 
moment Hamlet was written : the whole future of the 
realm turned on the question of the succession and the 
character of the future monarch ; the most direct heir to 
the realm was a prince who was melancholy by tempera- 
ment, whose character seemed flawed by a vacillating 
will and a habit of procrastination ; on the other hand, 
he had an unexpected capacity for acting with decision 
in emergencies, as, for instance, in the Gowry con- 
spiracy ; he was one of the most learned princes in 
Europe, and he took an intense interest in philosophy and 
theology. 

* See especially Burton and Hume Brown. 



Richard II. and Hamlet 45 

His whole situation was tragic and difficult : his father 
had been murdered, and his mother had married the 
murderer ; to the amazement of Europe he had allowed 
his royal authority to be usurped and his own person 
placed in jeopardy by a man of the same title and family 
as the usurper, a person who, to the excited imagination 
of the time, seemed almost like a reincarnation of the 
same evil genius who had ruined the mother. 

Let us now examine carefully the connection of 
Shakespeare's friends and patrons with the Scottish, 
prince. The nation, taken as a whole, seems to have 
profoundly mistrusted the Cecils, and Essex made himself 
the mouthpiece of this mistrust. It was known how 
completely Elizabeth trusted Burleigh and how great 
her confidence was ; but the Essex faction accused him 
of dishonest diplomacy, of spying, of eavesdropping, 
of " laying trains to entrap people " and many other 
objectionable practices. After the death of Burleigh 
Robert Cecil succeeded, and more than succeeded, to his 
father's ill-repute. One group of his enemies accused 
him of designing to marry the Lady Arabella Stuart, 
and seize the crown for himself in her name ; Essex, 
at his trial, declared that Robert Cecil was in collusion 
with the Spaniards and wished to dehver the crown to 
the Spanish Infanta; it is quite possible that Essex 
sincerely believed this, and that it was one of the motives 
for his action — at any rate, he said so upon his 
oath. 

It is obvious that the Essex conspiracy was aimed 
especially at Raleigh and Robert Cecil, and was essentially 
an endeavour to take the queen from their influence. 



46 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

With the details of this conspiracy, in so far as they affect 
Shakespeare, I will deal later. Here I onty wish to point 
out that Shakespeare himself had a double connection 
with it, once through his company and once through 
his friend and patron — Southampton. 

The Essex conspirators had, as we have seen, requested 
Shakespeare's company to perform the play of Richard II., 
since, because it dealt with the deposition of a monarch, 
it was supposed to have a definite bearing on their 
case. 

The attempt on the queen's person was made and 
failed ; Essex, the brilliant idol of the populace, was 
tried and executed ; Southampton, Shakespeare's patron 
and friend, was condemned to death, though afterwards 
reprieved, and at the time Hamlet was written he was 
still in the Tower. 

Shakespeare's company, as we have seen, were practically 
disgraced because of their sympathy with Essex. So 
general was this sympathy and so determined were the 
players to make capital of it on the stage, that for several 
years after the Essex conspiracy no plays dealing with 
any conspiracy were allowed at all, the authorities being 
firmly convinced that any conspiracy play, whatever its 
ostensible subject, would really allude to Essex. 

Now, in addition to these reasons — the popular sympathy 
with Essex, his own company's marked connection — 
Shakespeare had reasons of his own for taking the greatest 
interest in the Essex conspiracy. Southampton was 
certainly Shakespeare's most generous patron ; if, as 
seems plausible, he was also the hero of the sonnets, he 
was Shakespeare's best-beloved friend. As the result 



Richard II. and Hamlet 47 

of his connection with that conspiracy he was under 
sentence of death ; he was reprieved for the time being ; 
but, any day, the intrigues of Robert Cecil and his 
faction might destroy him. 

Such was the exact situation when Shakespeare's 
Hamlet was produced. 



CHAPTER II 

HAMLET AND THE DARNLEY MURDER 

The subject of Hamlet was sufficiently well known before 
Shakespeare treated of it. It is told in the Historia 
Danica of Saxo Grammaticus, who wrote about 1180- 
1208. It appeared translated into French in Belief orest's 
Histoires Tragiques in 1570. There is an English prose 
version, The Hystorie oj Hamhlet, which dates from 1608 
and is thus certainly later in date than the play, though 
possibly there were earlier versions which have been 
lost. 

There can be no doubt that a play on the subject existed 
as early as 1589, for Nash makes a plain reference to it in 
his preface to Greene's Menaphon (1587 or 1589), and 
Lodge in his Wit's Miser ie alludes to a ghost which cried 
like an oyster- wife, " Hamlet, revenge " : « play of Hamlet 
was also performed by the Lord Chamberlain's company 
in 1594. There is a general consensus of opinion that 
this early Hamlet cannot have been by Shakespeare, 
since Meres does not refer to it in his famous list given 
in the Palladis Tamia of 1598. 

The general consensus of opinion is that this early 
drama was probably by Kyd. 

Since Kyd's play has disappeared, it is totally im- 
possible to ascertain whether he did or did not use historical 
material as an element in that drama though, so far as 

48 



Hamlet and the Darnley Murder 49 

concerns any material existing previous to 1589, he may 
quite well have done so, and I would call the reader's 
attention very carefully to the fact, for it may be signifi- 
cant, that the only historical parallels I find to known 
elements in the earlier Hamlet are all, as a matter of fact, 
anterior to this date. My method will be to compare 
the play with the Amleth story on the one side and the 
historical details on the other, and to show that the 
action of the play far more closely agrees with that of 
history than with that of the saga, and also that the 
main problems of the play are not the problems of the 
saga but are certainly those of the history. 

In Shakespeare's drama the queen is called Gertrude ; 
her first husband is Hamlet, like his son, and the murderous 
usurper is Claudius. In the saga, the queen is Geruth, 
her first husband is Horvendil, and his brother, who slays 
him, is Feng. 

What the saga says concerning the murder is the 

following : 

" Such great good fortune stung Feng with jealousy so 
that he resolved treacherously to waylay his brother — thus 
showing that goodness is not safe even from those of a man's 
own household. And behold, when a chance came to murder 
him, his bloody hand sated even the deadly passion of his 
soul. Then he took the wife of the brother he had butchered, 
capping unnatural murder with incest." 

Feng admits his brother's murder to the people ; but 
he invents a justification for his deed by saying that 
his brother had planned the murder of the queen — 
Gertrude. There was thus nothing secret about the 
murder which took place publicly, and which was ac- 
knowledged before the whole court. The prose Hy^tone 



50 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

of HamUet gives exactly the same version as Saxo 
Grammaticus ; it tells how the adulterer murdered his 
brother at a banquet, and then slandered the dead man 
by saying that he would have slain his wife ; "so, 
instead of pursuing him as a parricide and an incestuous 
person, all the courtiers admired and flattered him in his 
good fortune." 

We may now turn to Shakespeare and note how close 
are the known parallels to the history of James I. — the 
identical person in whom both Shakespeare and his 
audience had, at that moment, reason to take such a 
profound interest. 

To begin with, the device of having the murder told 
by a ghost has no parallel whatever in the saga source 
(there would be no motive for it) ; but it had a parallel 
in the Darnley murder for the Scottish ballad-makers 
had already hit on exactly that device. Thus, in Edin- 
burgh, 1567, there was published a ballad entitled The 
Testament and Tragedie of the umquhile King Henrie Stuart, 
oj gude memorie. 

In it, the unhappy ghost of the murderec^ king returns 
and laments : 

" Sum tyme scho ^ thocht I was sa amiabill, 
Sa perfect, plesand, and sa delectabill ; 
. . . she luid me by all wycht ; 
Sum tyme, to show affectioun favourabill, 
Gratifeit me with giftis honorabill ; 

Sum tyme in mynde she praisit me sa hycht 
Leifand all uther ; hir bedfellow brycht 
Chesit me to be and maid me your king." 

^ i.e. Mary. 



Hamlet and the Darnley Murder 51 

Then, further, the murder in the saga takes place, as 
we have seen, in an open and obvious way, and is fully 
acknowledged. 

In Shakespeare the ghost explains that his murder 

is secret and stealthy ^ : 

" Now, Hamlet, hear : 
'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, 
A serpent stung me ; so the whole ear of Denmark 
Is by a forged process of my death 
Rankly abused : 

. . . Sleeping within my orchard, 
My custom always of the afternoon, 
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole 
With juice of cursed hebenon in a via), 
And in the porches of my ears did pour 
The leporous distilment ; . . . 
And a most instant tetter bark'd about. 
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust, 
All my smooth body." 

Now, the father of James 1. was finally murdered by 
means of, or at least concurrently with, a gunpowder 
explosion ; but it was very generally beheved that a 
previous attempt had been made to poison him. 

Burton ^ says : 

" Darnley was seized with a sudden and acute illness 
which broke out cutaneously. Poison was at first naturally 
suspected. The disease was speedily pronounced to be 
small-pox ; but it has been conjectured that it may have 
been one of those forms of contamination which had then 
begun to make their silent and mysterious visitation in this 
country, while the immediate cause by which they were 
communicated was yet unknown. From what occurred 
afterwards it became a current belief that he had been 
poisoned." 

1 Act I., V. 2 History of Scotland, Vol. IV. 



52 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

The plot for his destruction with gunpowder was next 
attempted ; but it does not appear that he perished as 
a result of the explosion. Burton continues : 

" It seems that the intended victim with his page . . . 
attempted to escape and even got over a wall into a garden 
when they were seized and strangled. They were found 
without any marks from the explosion but with marks of 
other violence." 

Now here we surely have remarkable correspondences 
with the Shakespearian murder : we have the body of 
the victim covered with a " loathsome tetter " which is 
ascribed to the malign influence of poison ; we have the 
secret character of the murder itself, and we have the 
body of the victim found in an " orchard." 

Let us once again compare Shakespeare with a source 
which was certainly available both for himself and for 
his audience, Buchanan's Detection} 

" Ere he was passed a mile from Stirhng all the parts of 
his body were taken with such a sore ache, as it might easily 
appear that the same proceeded not of the force of any sickness 
but by plain treachery. The tokens of which treachery, 
certain black pimples, so soon as he was come to Glasgow, 
broke out all over his whole body with so great ache and 
such pain throughout his limbs, that he lingered out his life 
with very small hope of escape ; and yet all this while the 
queen would not suffer so much as a physician to come 
near him." 

Buchanan dwells on the same theme in his Oration,'^ also 
a source available alike to Shakespeare and Shakespeare's 
audience, and probably known very well to all of them : 

"It is certainly known that he was poisoned. . . . For 

^ Scotch Version, 1572. 

2 Possibly by another hand. 



Hamlet and the Darnley Murder 53 

though the Shame lessness of Men would not stick to deny a 
thing so manifest ; yet the kind of Disease, strange, unknown 
to the People, unacquainted with Physicians, especially such 
as had not been in Italy and Spain, black Pimples breaking 
out all over his body, grievous aches in all his limbs and in- 
tolerable stink disclosed it — there is no Adulteress but the 
same is also a Poisoner. Read her own Letter. He is not 
much deformed and yet he hath received much. Whereof 
hath he received much ? The thing itself, the Disease, the 
Pimples, the Savor do tell you. Even that much he received 
that brought Deformity, Forsooth, very Poison. Whatsoever 
it was that he received the same, the same was the Cause of 
his Deformity. 

"... She will have the manner of ministring the Medicine 
to be secret. If it be to heal him what needs that secrecy ? 
... To whom is this Charge committed to seek out a new 
Medicine and curing for the King ? Forsooth to the King's 
Enemy, to the Queen's adulterer, the vilest of all two-footed 
beasts, whose house was in France defamed for poisoning 
and whose Servants were there for the same cause, some 
tortured, some imprisoned, and all suspected. . . . 

" So forsooth are Medicines accustomed to be provided by 
Enemies, in a secret Place, without Witnesses. That there- 
fore which an Adulterer and Adulteress, and the partner of 
the Wife's Body, curiously prepareth and secretly admini- 
streth ; what Medicine this is, let every Man with himself 
weigh and consider." 

We see here the immense stress which Buchanan lays 
on the secrecy of the murder, on the solitude of the 
unhappy victim at the time the poisoning took place, 
on the foulness produced in his body, the deformity, the 
pustules, etc., all of which agree closely with the murder 
of Hamlet's father, and, what is especially significant, 
not one of these details is to be found in either of the 
prose versions. In the so-called literary source, the 
murder is not secret, the victim is not alone, poison is 



54 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

not used, deformity is not caused. It is worthy of note 
that the very term the ghost uses in describing his con- 
dition, " leprous," had been appUed by contemporary 
writers to Darnley. 

A satirist called him "the leper," leprosy being con- 
founded with " la grosse verole." ^ 

We may also observe that Buchanan insists that the 
method of poisoning was well known in France and Italy, 
and Hamlet himself compares his father's death to the 
Italian murder of Gonzago. 

Buchanan says : " There is no adulteress but the same 
is also a poisoner," and Hamlet has : " None wed the 
second but who killed the first." ^ 

We may compare also Buchanan's own satire appended 
to his Latin version : 

" Et quem non potuit morientem auferre veneno 
Hunc fera, sulphureo pulvere tollit humo, 

Nobilis ille tuas vires Darnleuis heros 
pertulit, heu tristes pertulit ille faces. 

Siccine Bothwellum poteras sme lege tenere ? 
Siccine Bothwelli poterant te flectere verba." 

This, again, has a close resemblance to the ghost's 
lament : 

" Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, 
With witchcraft of his wit. 
O wicked wit and gifts that have the power 
So to seduce." 

Buchanan terms Bothwell "an adulterer," and "the 
^ Andrew Lang, Mystery of Mary Stuart. ^ Act III., ii. 



Hamlet and the Darnley Murder 55 

vilest of all two-legged beasts," who has power to bend 
the queen with his words, and Shakespeare uses almost 
the same phrases. 

Another curious detail of the murder may be observed 
here. The ghost declares that he was murdered by 
poison — ^henbane — poured in his ear while he slept. 
Now, Mary's accusers,^ to heap calumny upon her, had 
accused her of conniving also at the murder of her 
first husband — Francis II. of France. That unhappy 
prince died from an abscess in the ear, but it was a 
common rumour that it was caused by poison inserted 
in the ear. 

Now, does it not look as if Shakespeare were combining 
in one most powerful and dramatic scene these three 
attempts all associated with Mary Queen of Scots : the 
poison in the ear from the reputed murder of Francis IL, 
the loathsomeness and vileness of the unhappy victim 
from the first attempt on Darnley, and the body of the 
victim found in the garden with the actual murder of 
Darnley ? Why not ? All these three attempts had 
already been associated together, one strengthening 
another, by the queen's accusers,^ and a dramatic poet 
very naturally desires to make his play as intense and 
moving as he can. The association, like the Darnley 
ghost, is already there. Why not use it ? 

There is, however, one important modification. At the 
time when Mary Queen of Scots was executed, she was 
regarded by the people of England with embittered hate, 
and it is more than probable that every word of Buchanan's 

1 See Leslie, Bishop of Ross [Hatfield Paper s). 
* See Leslie, Bishop of Ross. 



56 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

terrific indictment was regarded as true. James had, 
however, a certain respect for the memory of his 
mother, and it is probable that anyone who desired 
to please him might be inclined to take a lenient view 
of Mary's connection with the crime. It has been 
possible even for modern historians to deny altogether 
or in part her connection with it, and her apologists of 
course (like Belleforest) did so in Shakespeare's own time. 

Now, this is very much what happens in Hamlet. In 
the saga there is no doubt whatever as to the queen's 
guilt ; she has not only committed adultery, she has 
connived at the murder, and acquiesced in the false 
statement invented to justify the deed. In Shakespeare, 
on the contrary, we have the subtlety and complexity 
of the history — nothing whatever is said to make it plain 
that the queen has knowingly acquiesced in her husband's 
murder. She may have done ; but though the ghost 
accuses her of adultery he does not say that she connived 
at the other crime. His attitude towards her is always 
tender and indulgent, and Darnley, we m.ay remember, 
to the last day of his recorded life sought the love of 
Mary, and pathetically believed in the possibility of a 
reconciliation with her. That is half the pathos of 
Darnley's fate, and it is certainly half the pathos of 
Shakespeare's ghost that he continues to love his erring 
wife in spite of all. 

As a reference to Buchanan will at once show, he lays 

enormous stress on the undiminished affection of the 

unhappy victim which survived even the attempt to 

poison him. " Why," asks Buchanan,^ '' did she thrust 

^ Oration. 



Hamlet and the Darnley Murder 57 

away from her the young Gentleman ... he being 
beautiful, near of her kin, of the Blood Royal and (that 
which is greatest), most entirely loving her." 

Again, both the ghost and Hamlet call attention to 
the fickleness of the queen. The ghost claims that he 
won her swiftly : he says his love 

" was of that dignity 
That it went hand in hand even with the vow 
I made to her in marriage." 

This, again, looks as if it were suggested by the rapid 
marriage of Mary and DarnJey after a brief acquaint- 
ance. 

Again, even before he has seen the ghost, Hamlet 
dwells on the fact that his mother used to show such 
an intense affection for his father; but forgot him so 
soon and declined upon one whose gifts were so far 
inferior. 

" Heaven and earth ! 
Must I remember ? why, she would hang on him, 
As if increase of appetite had grown 
By what it fed on : and yet, with a month — 
. . . married with my uncle, 
My father's brother, but no more like my father 
Than I to Hercules . . . 

O most wicked speed, to post, 
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets." ^ 

Now, this is precisely one of Buchanan's chief indict- 
ments against Mary, that she so vehemently loved her 
first husband, but so rapidly forgot him and married the 
second who was so immeasurably his inferior in person 
and charm. 

1 Act I., ii. 



58 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 
These are some of the most apposite passages : 

" What if I ask again why she so extremely loved the young 
Man ? why she so hastily married him and so unmeasur- 
able honoured him ? Such are the natures of some 
women. 

"That husband therefore whom she lately wedded . . . 
without whom she could not endure, whom she scarcely 
durst suffer out of her sight, him she thrust forth." 

"... that adulterous partner, neither in birth nor in 
beauty nor in any honest quality was in any wise comparable 
with her disdained husband." 

" Bothwell was an Ape in purple." 

" Neither is the cause unknown why she did it. Even 
that the same filthy marriage with Bothwell might be 
accomplished." 

" One is divorced, another is coupled, and that in such 
posting speed, as they might have scant have hasted to 
furnish any triumph of some noble victory," ^ 

Here, again, we have phrases which closely resemble 
Shakespeare's " posting to incestuous sheets." 

Both Hamlet and the ghost lay enormous stress on this 
indecent haste, and on the contrast between the two 
husbands : 

" A little month, or ere those shoes were old 
With which she follow'd my poor father's body. 
Like Niobe, all tears : — why she, even she, — 
O God ! a beast that wants discourse of reason 
Would have mourned longer . . . 
within a month 
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears 
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes." 

We may observe also that this hasty marriage was 
held from the beginning to affect closely James himself. 

^ Oration. Scotch version. 



Hamlet and the Darnley Murder 59 

Burton quotes from the memoirs of Sir James Melville : 

" every good subject that loved the queen's honour and 
the prince's security had sad hearts and thought her majesty 
would be dishonoured and the prince in danger to be cut off 
by him who had slain his father." 

Now here, again, we have the atmosphere of Hamlet : 
the queen's disgraceful haste, the secrecy and suspicion and 
the peril of her son. 

Buchanan says ^ : 

" When of the forty days appointed for the mourning, scarce 
twelve were yet fully past . . . taking heart of grace unto 
her, and neglecting such trifles, she cometh to her own bias, 
and openly sheweth her own natural conditions." 

Buchanan dwells on the fact that before the marriage, 
Bothwell was accused of having committed fornication 
with his wife's own kinswoman . . . and the divorce 
with Lady Jane Bothwell was " posted forward." 

" And so at length within the eight days (from the time of 
the divorce commenced), she finished that unmatrimonial 
matriijiony, all good men so far detesting or at least grudgingly 
forejudging the unlucky end thereof. 

"... but Monsieur de Croce though he was earnestly desired 
could not with his honour be present at the feast." 

Buchanan makes out Bothwell to be a kind of specialist 
in adultery : " Bothwell had then alive two wives already, 
not yet divorced and the third neither lawfully married 
nor orderly divorced." 

" The deed," says Buchanan, " of itself is odious in a 
woman, it is monstrous in a wife, not only excessively loved 
but also most zealously honoured, it is incredible. And 

1 Detection. 



6o Hamlet and the Seottish Succession 

being committed against him . . . whose affection requires 
love . . . upon that young man in whom there is not so 
much as alleged any just cause of offence." 

Here, again, we may remember what Hamlet says of 
his father's affection for his mother : 

" he might not beteem the winds of heaven 
Visit her face too roughly." 

Throughout Shakespeare's drama enormous stress is 
laid on the difference in character and appearance between 
the two husbands. Now almost all the contemporary 
records stress this difference in the case of Damlcy and 
Bothwell. 

" He {i.e. Darnle^^) was a comel3' Prince of a fair and large 
stature of body, pleasant in countenance, affable to all men 
and devout, well-exercised in martial pastimes upon horse- 
back as any prince of that age." ^ 

Compare Horatio's address to the ghost,- 

" What art thou that usurp 'st this time of night, 
Together with that fair and warlike form 
In which the majesty of buried Denmark 
Did sometimes march ? " 

And also the description of Marcellus : 

" With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch." 

In 1566 de Silva learned from Mauvissi^re that he 
(Darnley) mostly passed his time in warlike exercises, 
and was a good horseman. Causin speaks of him as 
" being accomplished with all excellent endowments 
both of body and of mind," ^ 

1 Historic of James the Sixt. '^ Act I., i. 

^ Quoted by Hay Fleming, 



Hamlet and the Darnley Murder 6t 

Knox's continiiator thus describes him : " He was of a 
comely stature and none was hke unto liim within this 
island." 

Buchanan says in Mi's Detection (of Mary): " Siie long 
beheld . . . with greedy eyes his dead corl)S(^ the 
goodliest corpse of any gentleman that ev(T lived in this 
ago." 

Compare this with Horatio's speech : ^ 

" J saw him once ; he was a goodly king," 

and Hamlet's reply : 

" He was ii, man, tala- liiui lor .i.ll in all, 
I shall not look npon his like, af^.i.in." 

Again we note as somewhat curious the immense stress 
that is laid upon the armour of the ghost ; it makes him 
more digniiied and more warlike. So, also, Darjiley 
liad a fancy for appearing in full armour which some; 
persons thought an aff (fetation, and which his enemies 
ridiculed ; thus in 1565 he appeared in full armour at 
Mary's side in their brief war against the Lords of the 
Congregation ; it was, in that age at any rate, a real 
peculiarity. 

Bothwell, on the other hand, is persistently described 
by Buchanan and others as a needy adventurer, given to 
vices of a low cast : drunkenness and licentiousness. 

Buchanan says : 

" What was there in him Both well that was of a woman 
of any honest countenance to be desired, was there any 
gilt of eloquence or grace of beauty or virtue of mynd. . . . 



Act I., ii. 



62 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

As for his eloquence we need not speak . . . they that 
have heard him are not ignorant of his rude utterance 
and blockishness ... his enemies face he never durst 
abide ... by a thief, a notable coward, he was deadly 
wounded and thrown to the ground. ... He was brought 
up in the Bishop of Murray's palace ... in drunkenness 
and whoredoms, among vile ministries of dissolute mis- 
order. . . . Bothwell was a man in extreme poverty, doubtful 
whether he were more vile or more wicked. ... As for 
excessive and immoderate use of lechery, he therein no less 
sought to be famous than other men do shun dishonour and 
infamy." 

We have thus in Bothwell exactly the same type of 
character as that depicted in Claudius : Hamlet alludes 
with emphatic disgust to the heavy drinking of the king, 
he dwells on his licentiousness and points the bitter 
contrast between Claudius and his brother, exactly as 
Buchanan points the contrast between the hideousness 
and licentiousness of Bothwell and the beauty and state- 
liness of Darnley (Acts IH.-IV.). 

" See, what a grace was seated on this brow ; 
Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself, . . . 
This was your husband. Look you now, what 

follows ; 
Here is your husband ; like a mildewed ear 
Blasting his wholesome brother. . . . 

Ha ! have you eyes ? 
You cannot call it love." 

So Buchanan insists that the passion of Mary for 
Bothwell cannot properly have been called love, but only 
that insensate rage of lust which sometimes seizes upon 
women and blinds them to all that is base in character 
and hideous in person. 



Hamlet and the Darnley Murder 63 

Hamlet accuses Claudius ^ of exactly the vices condemned 
in Bothwell : he speaks of killing him 

" When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage 
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed, 
At gaming, swearing or about some act 
That has no relish of salvation in't." 

His drunkenness, of course, and its corrupting effect 
on the court is insisted on from the very beginning 2 : 
Hamlet says to Horatio : 

" what is your affair in Elsinore ? 
We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart." 

Bothwell's enemies had accused him of practising art 
magic, and both Mary's friends and enemies, including 
the hostile lords in their proclamations, averred that 
Bothw.ll had won her favour by unlawful means, philtres, 
witchcraft, or what we may call hypnotism. 

Shakespeare does not represent Hamlet as accusing 
Claudius of the Black Art, but he may be referring to 
these accusations when he makes the ghost accuse him 
of seducing the queen " with witchcraft of his wicked 
wit." 

I have already pointed out,^ that in Hamlet the 
ghost is a Cathohc, whereas his son is a Protestant, 
and this is another matter in which the play differs 
totally from the saga and corresponds closely with the 
history. 

Horatio, in the opening of the play,^ has just come 

1 Act III., iii. ^ Act I., U. 

• Introduction. * Act I., ii. 



64 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

from Wittenberg, and Hamlet greets him as his " fellow- 
student " ; Hamlet also desires to return to Wittenberg, 
which Claudius does not wish to permit. 

■ " For your intent 
In going back to school in Wittenberg 
It is most retrograde to our desire." ^ 

Nothing, of course, is said of any Wittenberg in the 
saga, and I am positive that any reader who cares to 
refer to Saxo Grammaticus will feel that the mention of 
any modern university would be singularly out of place 
in that barbarous production. 

But Wittenberg, on account of its association with 
Luther, was famous as one of the chief Protestant centres 
of Europe ; Scottish universities, as already pointed 
out, had in the sixteenth century a very close and intimate 
connection with German Protestant universities, and thus 
the mention of Wittenberg certainly suggests a Protestant 
connection for both Horatio and Hamlet. 

It is equally clear that the ghost is Catholic. He speaks 
of purgatory, and of himself as being condemned to its 
penalties 2 : 

" Doom'd for a certain time to, walk the night, 
And for the day confined to fast in fires, 
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature 
Are burnt and purged away : " 

The ghost, be it noted, lays no claim to entire innocence 
of life ; he admits " foul crimes." In the whole cruel and 
bitter story of his murder the thing that grieves him 
1 Act I., ii. 2 Act I., V. 



Hamlet and the Darnley Murder 65 

most is that he had no opportunity for absolution and 
extreme unction. 

" Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, 
Unhousel'd, disappointed, unaneled, 
No reckoning made, but sent to my account 
With all my imperfections on my head ; 
O horrible ! O horrible ! most horrible ! " 

Now here, again, we have an exact parallel with the 
history ; Darnley was a Catholic, he had committed 
" foul crimes," and he was cut off without the possibility 
of absolution and extreme unction. The son, James I., 
was a Protestant and a very keen and eager student, a 
fact on which he greatly plumed himself, of Protestant 
theology. 

In the saga story there is, of course, no ghost. Its 
function would, indeed, be totally unnecessary as 
neither Amlcth nor anyone else has the least doubt 
as to the guilt of the king, who, as we have seen, 
acknowledged it. 

In the history, however, the guilt of the culprits certainly 
was doubtful ; Bothwell seized the supreme power ; 
he was not at first openly accused, but suspicions were 
rife against him. Burton says : " Those who dared not 
speak openly gave utterance in the dark, and midnight 
accusations were heard with mysterious awe. Sir William 
Drury tells Cecil of a man who went about crying : 
' Vengeance on those who . . . caused the shedding of 
innocent blood. O Lord ! open the heavens and pour 
down vengeance.' " ^ 

^ History of Scotland. 
E 



66 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

Buchanan alludes to the same thing : people dared not 
openly accuse Bothwell of the offence, 

" specially as he himself was doer, judge, enquirer and 
examiner. Yet this fear which stopped the mouths of every 
man in particular could not restrain the multitude. Because 
both by books set out, by pictures and by cries in the dark 
night, it was so set out and handled that the doers of the 
mischievous fact might easily understand that those secrets 
of theirs were come abroad." 

Buchanan has also a curious tale of an apparition 
which came to the Earl of Athol and three of his 
friends on the night of the Darnley murder, wakened 
them out of their sleep, and apprised them of the crime. 

As we have also seen, there was a contemporary ballad 
which represented the ghost of Darnley as returning to 
tell his own pitiful tale. 

In the original prose story there was no voice crying 
out murder in the night and no apparition ; Shakespeare 
seems to have put them together, and dramatised them 
into the truly magnificent conception of the ghost of 
Hamlet's father. 

There was certainly a ghost in the earlier Hamlet 
— the play ascribed to Kyd — but, as I have already 
remarked, we have no means of knowing whether Kyd 
was using historical sources or not. 

Other curious details in the ghost-scene are worthy of 
comment. Thus the ghost tells Hamlet that it is com- 
pelled to depart ; but, when Hamlet exacts the oath of 
silence from Horatio and the soldiers, the ghost reappears 
in the most extraordinary way he^ieath the ground, so that 
Hamlet refers to him as *' this fellow in the cellarage " 
and calls him " an old mole." 



Hamlet and the Darnley Murder 67 

Now it was the murder of Rizzio which steeled Mary's 
heart against her husband, and it was very generally 
believed that Mary took an oath to murder him over 
Rizzio's grave. The Lennox MSS. are the main authorities 
for this incident ; they aver that, when Darnley and 
Mary were escaping together through the vaults of 
Holyrood, Darnley paused and uttered remorseful words 
over Rizzio's new-made grave ; they aver that Mary, 
seeing the grave, said " it should go very hard with her 
but a fatter than Rizzio should lie anear him ere one 
twelvemonth was at an end." Moreover, on the evening 
preceding Darnley's death, Mary is said to have reminded 
him of this very incident : 

" Rizzio," says Mr Andrew Lang, " was buried in the chapel 
vaults. In their escape Mary and Darnley passed by his 
grave ; she is said to have declared that ' ere a year he should 
have a fatter by his side ! ' On the evening preceding Darnley's 
death she reminded him that it was a year since Rizzio's 
murder." ^ 

Martin Hume speaks of the pretended reconciliation 
of the husband and wife : 

" In the course of their loving talk Mary dropped a sinister 
hint that just a year had passed since Rizzio's murder ; 
and, when she had gone, Darnley in the hearing of his pages, 
expressed his uneasiness that she had recollected it, for he at 
least had not forgotten her threat over Rizzio's grave." ^ 

Buchanan ^ says : 

" One Sunday night she discovered herself, and fetching a 
deep sigh : ' O says she, this time twelve month was David 

' Mystery of Mary Stuart. 

2 Love Affairs of Mary Stuart. 

3 Detection. 



68 Hamlet and the Scobtish Succession 

Rizzio slain.' This it seems came from her heart ; for within 
a few days, the unfortunate young Man, as an Inferiae to 
the Ghost of a Fidler, was strangled in his Bed . . . and his 
Body thrown out into the garden"; and again "suddenly, 
without any Funeral Honour in the Night Time, by common 
Carriers of dead Bodies, upon a vile Bier, she caused him to 
be buried by David Rizzio." 

It was thus a definite belief of Shakespeare's age, 
as the quotations above clearly show, that the oath 
ensuring the murder of Darnley had been taken in 
the vaults of Holyrood over the grave of Rizzio, and 
that this oath was punctually and to the time 
fulfilled. 

Does it not look as if it were this that had suggested 
the scene when the ghost in his turn reminds Hamlet of 
his oath with the voice that comes from the " Cellarage." 
The whole incident was, to the last degree, gruesome and 
suggestive, and is it not most exceedingly plausible that 
a popular dramatist and a tragic dramatist would prefer 
to work upon the emotions that he knew to be existing 
in the minds of his audience ? This is why we cannot 
be assured that we understand Shakespeare fully unless 
we take into account the Elizabethan point of view, for 
the associations existing in their minds, and to which 
the dramatist would naturally appeal, do not exist in 
ours. 

Another resemblance to the Darnle}^ murder lies in the 
attitude of the queen who is always loyal to her second 
husband ; she will not leave him even for Hamlet's bitter 
rebukes, and she takes his part until the end. 

This, of course, was characteristic of Mary Queen of 
Scots, who could not be persuaded to renounce Bothwell. 



Hamlet and the Darnley Murder 69 

Throckmorton, in a letter to Elizabeth, July 1564, 

says : 

" The queen will not by any means be induced to lend her 
authority to prosecute the murder, nor will not consent by 
any persuasion to abandon the lord Bothwell for her husband, 
but avoweth constantly that she will live and die with him 
and sayeth that if it were put to her choice to relinquish her 
crown and kingdom for the lord Bothwell she would leave 
her kingdom and dignity to live as a simple damoiselle with 
him and that she will never consent that he shall fare worse 
or have more harm than herself." 

So Throckmorton says again to Elizabeth : 

" She will by no means yield to abandon Bothwell for her 
husband, nor rchnquish him ; which matter will do her most 
harm of all and hardneth these lords to great severity against 
her." 

So the Lords of Scotland communicate to Sir Nicholas 
Throckmorton, July 1567 : 

"We began to deal with her majesty, and to persuade her 
that, for her own honour, the safety of her son, the discharging 
of her conscience . . . she would be content to separate herself 
from that wicked man, to whom she was never lawfully joined, 
and with whom she could not remain without a manifest loss 
of honour . . . but all in vain." 

Throckmorton himself repeatedly states to Elizabeth 
that the Lords were willing to be lenient to Mary 
personally. 

" I have also persuaded herself to renounce Bothwell for her 
husband and to be contented to suffer a divorce to pass 
between them ; she hath sent me word that she will in no 
wise consent to it but will rather die." 

It is impossible not to see the likeness between this 



70 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

and Hamlet's expostulation with the queen,^ when he 
reproaches her with the dishonour she has brought upon 
herself, appeals to her conscience, and finally implores 
her to leave his uncle : 

" Good-night : but go not to mine uncle's bed ; 
. . . Refrain to-night, 
And that shall lend a kind of easiness 
To the next abstinence ; the next more easy." 

Once again there is no parallel whatever in the original 
prose source. 

One more curious detail may be added. 

Claudius, in Hamlet, is specially associated with three 
courtiers called respectively, Osric,^ Rosencrantz, and 
Guildenstern,^ and among the people who received the 
captured Both well in Denmark was a certain " Eric 
Rosencrantz." ^ 

I have already pointed out that there was a Guildenstern 
at the court of Scotland. 

Before leaving, finally, the subject of the Darnley 
murder, it is important to remember that James I. and 
Bothwell were, from the outset, pitted against each other 
by their respective supporters. The prince, though only 
an infant, was legally represented as demanding vengeance 
for his murdered father, and Bothwell was very generally 
supposed to have designs upon his life. 

" Bothwell after his marriage to the queen," says Sir 
James Melville, "was very earnest to get the Prince in his 
hands but my Lord of Mar would not deliver him, praying 
me to help to save the Prince out of their hands who had 

1 Act III., iv. 2 Act v., ii. 3 Act IV., ii. 

^ Les Affeires du Conie de Bodwel (Bannatyne Club). 



Hamlet and the Darnley Murder 71 

slain his father and had made his vaunt already among his 
familiars that, if he could get him once in his hands, he should 
warrant him from revenging of his father's death." 

Similarly the proclamation issued 1567 by the Con- 
federate Lords said that Bothwell had murdered the king, 
had entrapped the queen into an " unhonest marriage," 
and had made preparations " to commit the like murther 
upon the son as was upon the father." 

At the battle of Carberry Hill the Confederate Lords 
had, as their standard, their favourite picture of the 
murdered man and of the infant prince kneeling by the 
side of the corpse, and demanding vengeance. 



CHAPTER III 

JAMES I. AND HAMLET 

And now I will turn to what has always been acknow- 
ledged as the crucial problem of the drama : the character 
of the hero himself, his melancholy and irresolution. 
The main problem of Hamlet always has been to determine 
why Hamlet does not act. He knows what he ought to 
do ; he himself realises it fully. .Why does he not com- 
plete his task ? Does he hesitate, as Goethe thinks, 
because of a fineness of nature too great for the coarseness 
of the task which is thrust upon him ? Does he hesitate, 
as he himself accuses himself, out of mere slothfulness ? 
Does he hesitate, as Coleridge suggests, because in him 
the powers of thought have so far outweighed the 
powers of action that he cannot act ? Does he hesitate 
because incipient insanity is sapping his intellect ? All 
these points of view have been advanced, have been 
discussed at length in volume after volume. Mr Brad- 
ley, in his Shakespearean Tragedy, has reviewed many 
of them with admirable cogency, and in Tlie Problem 
oj Hamlet Mr J. M. Robertson has shown that in 
his opinion the inconsistencies in the character of 
Hamlet cannot be really reconciled, which he explains 
by the fact that Shakespeare is working over material 
set for him by an early play. 
A study of Furness's " Variorum Edition " of Hamlet will 

72 



James I. and Hamlet 73 

show how numerous these explanations are, and how 
very greatly they vary. 

My own suggestion would be that Hamlet was probably 
a great deal simpler for Shakespeare's audience to under- 
stand than it is for us ; they carried in all likelihood a 
commentary in their own minds which enabled them to 
comprehend it more easily than we can. Tolstoy has, 
in fact, accused Shakespeare of not being a great artist,-'- 
precisely because Hamlet is so difficult to understand ; 
now as Shakespeare was not only a great artist, but, 
also, as we know him to have been, a popular dramatist 
of intense appeal, the difficulty is probably one which 
exists mainly for later commentators and did not exist 
to the same extent for the original audience. 

My own explanation of the central theme of the play 
would be that Shakespeare was stating with unexampled 
force and cogency an historical problem which neither 
he nor any member of his audience possessed at that time 
the data for quite adequately solving. It is my purpose 
to show, however, that the problem was essentially 
historical and political. Let us first observe clearly one 
point ; there is not a hint or shadow of the main problem 
in the prose source. 

In Saxo Grammaticus and the Hystorie oj Hamblet 
alike the task before the hero is perfectly simple and 
the difficulties are all obvious and material. The hero 
desires to avenge his father's murder and he desires to 
gain for himself the crown which his uncle has usurped ; 
he pursues these aims with relentless determination and 
undeviating skill ; but, since he is isolated among enemies, 
1 What is Art? 



74 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

he shams madness as a means of putting these enemies 
off the scent, and his madness takes the most grotesque 
and ridiculous form. 
Saxo says : 

" Every day he remained in his house utterly Hstless and 
unclean, flinging himself on the ground and bespattering his 
person with foul and filthy dirt. His discoloured face and 
visage smutched with slime denoted foolish and grotesque 
madness. 

"... He used at times to sit by the fire and rake the embers 
with his hands." 

The Hystorie 0} Hamblet is still more extravagant : 

" hee rent and tore his clothes, wallowing and lying in the 
dust and mire, his face all filthy and blacke, running through 
the streets like a man distraught, not speaking one word but 
such as seemed to proceed from madness and mere frenzy." 

We can see at once the enormous difference between 
this coarse and crude representation and the subtlety of 
Hamlet. 

Now let us compare the character of Hamlet carefully 
with what was, at that time, known of James I. 

There is, as already pointed out, the fact of education 
at a university specially associated with Protestant 
theology ; James himself was, of course, all his hfe 
famous as a Protestant theologian ; he took part in 
theological discussions, he presided at -"heological dis- 
cussions, and he showed marked ability in argument. 

Hamlet is the most philosophic and meditative of all 
Shakespeare's characters, and he shows a curious love of 
the darker side of nature. 



James I. and Hamlet 75 

Now James was the pupil of a distinguished scholar 
— Buchanan ; he took all his life a great interest in 
philosophy, and he was, as his books show, especially 
fond of studying the darker side of nature. 

James was, in his early life at least, much isolated ; 
there was hardly anyone whom he really trusted except 
possibly Erskine of Mar, in whom he had immense con- 
fidence, and with whom he had been educated. So 
Shakespeare represents Hamlet as being lonely and 
isolated ; but as having one friend in whom he reposes 
perfect confidence and absolute trust — that one friend 
being his fellow-student — Horatio. 

This second Earl of Mar was the son of the first Earl 
who had rescued James in his infancy from the hands 
of Bothwell as recounted above ; this second Earl having 
been James' own fellow-student, it was to him that 
he entrusted the education of Prince Henry. We may 
also observe that Mar was in England at the time Hamlet 
was written ; he had been sent by James to confer with 
Essex ; when he arrived, however, he found that Essex 
had already been executed, and he chose his own line of 
action, his aim being to get his master's right to the 
succession estabhshed ; Elizabeth is said to have given 
him the promise he required. 

On March 25th, Tobie Matthew writes to Dudley 
Carleton : 

" The Earl of Mar is here, as ambassador out of Scotland, 
to congratulate the queen's deliverance, to desire that his 
master may be declared successor, and to act, as is conjectured, 
some greater business which is Hkely enough, for he is a man 
of extraordinary courage and place." 



76 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

Now, when we remember that Mar was actually in 
England at the time Hamlet was composed, and that 
Shakespeare had ever}^ reason for furthering his mission, 
it does look as if he might have given hints for Horatio — 
the trusted friend and fellow-student. 

The most peculiar trait in Hamlet's character is his 
vacillation. He knows how he ought to act, yet he 
hesitates whenever action is necessary ; on the other 
hand, he has plenty of nerve in important crises ; when 
a crisis arrives he can act, and often does act, with quite 
exceptional strength and vigour. 

Professor Bradley analyses at some length this extra- 
ordinary contradiction ; he does not find Hamlet 
essentially the meditative, irresolute person whom 
Coleridge and Schlegel believe him to be ; he finds that 
he has a capacity for strong and vigorous action which 
is, however, lamed by his melancholy : 

" This state accounts for Hamlet's energy as well as for his 
lassitude, these quick decided actions of his being the out- 
come of a nature normally far from passive, now suddenly 
stimulated and producing healthy impulses which work 
themselves out before they have time to subside." 

Examples of this sudden vigorous action are, of course, 
Hamlet's behaviour in the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern 
affair, also his conduct at the end of the play, etc., etc. 

Now, this curious baflling character, this hesitancy 
and delay combined with sudden vigour in emergencies, 
is just precisely the character of James L as it appeared 
to his contemporaries. 

Perhaps the best evidence on this point can be found 
in the correspondence of Elizabeth and James. We 



James I. «a,ud Hamlet ']'] 

there find Elizabeth, in letter after letter, taking almost 
precisely this view of James' character ; she advises him 
to be stern and to punish where punishment is due ; it 
is not, she declares, that she herself loves bloodshed or 
revenge ; but it is a monarch's duty both to himself 
and to his kingdom that he should punish rebelUous 
subjects. She warns James that the younger Both well 
(the nephew of his mother's husband), has repeatedly 
plotted against his life; he knows that Bothwell has so 
conspired ; he knows that his Hfe is endangered. 

Why does he not take adequate means to defend himself 
and his kingdom ? His delay is not so much mercy as 
slothfulness and sheer weakness of will. It is unkingly. 
He talks, but achieves nothing. 

Let me quote some highly significant examples : 

" If with my eyes I had not viewed these treasons I should 
be ashamed to write them you. And shall I tell you my 
thought herein ? I assure you, you are well worthy of such 
traitors, that, when you knew them and had them, you 
betrayed your own safety in favouring their lives. Good 
Lord ! who but yourself would have left such people to be 
able to do you wrong ? Give order with speed, that such 
scape not your correction." ^ 

We may compare this with Hamlet's bitter self- 
reproaches : 2 

"I . . . 

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak. 

Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, 

And can say nothing ; . . . 



1 Camden Society's Publications. Letter XXXIV. (spelling 
modernised). 

2 Act II., ii. 



78 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

it cannot be 
But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall 
To make oppression bitter." 

Let us keep in mind all the time that there is not one 
word of this reproach or hesitation in Shakespeare's 
source. The hero of the saga story pits himself as 
directly as possible against the king ; he is delayed by 
external circumstances solely, never by his own fault ; 
indeed, the whole point of the tale lies in the courage 
and decision of the prince who pursues his plan with 
undeviating resolution in the midst of the most difficult 
circumstances, and we have no reason to assume any 
difference in the Hamlet of Kyd's play. 

Again let us quote Ehzabeth ^ : 

" I hope you will not be careless of such practises as hath 
passed from any of yours without your commission, specially 
such attempts as might ruin your realm and danger you. 
If any respect whatever make you neglect so expedient a 
work, I am afraid your careless hide will work your unlooked 
danger." 

Place this beside Hamlet ^ : 

" How all occasions do inform against me, 
And spur my dull revenge ! What is a man, 
If his chief good and market of his time 
Be but to sleep and feed ? A beast, no more. 

. . . Now, whether it be 
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple 
Of thinking too precisely on the event, — 
A thought which, quarter'd, hath one part wisdom 
And ever three parts coward, I do not know 
Why yet I live to say ! ' This thing's to do, ' 
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means 
To do't." 



1 Letter XXXV. 2 ^ct IV., iv. 



James I. and Hamlet 79 

Hamlet, in fact, is as candid with himself as Elizabeth 
is with James ; the mental malady which they are 
analysing appears to be of exactly the same type. The 
main outlines of James' character, as shown by his actions, 
were, of course, known to every one who followed public 
affairs ; Shakespeare was certainly no less keen a student 
of character than Elizabeth and the analysis which 
would be possible to her would be equally possible to 
the poet. 

Again we quote Elizabeth. The occasion of the next 
letter is described as follows by Mr Tytler : 

" Attacking the palace of Holyrood at the head of his 
desperate followers Bothwell had nearly surprised and made 
prisoners both the king and his chancellor. . . . An alarm 
was given, the king took refuge in one of the turrets, the 
chancellor barricaded his room and bravely beat off his 
assailants ; whilst the citizens of Edinburgh, headed by their 
provost, rushed into the outer court of the palace, and, 
cutting their way through the outer ranks of the borderers, 
compelled Bothwell to precipitate flight." 

Elizabeth's letter runs : 

" My dear brother. Though the hearing of your most 
dangerous peril be that thing that I most reverently render 
my most lowly thanks to God that you, by his mighty hand, 
hath scaped yet hath it been no other hazard than such as 
both hath been foreseen and foretold. ... I know not 
what to write, so little do I like to lose labour in vain ; for 
if I saw counsel avail or aught pursued in due time or season, 
I should think my time fortunately spent to make you reap 
the due fruit of ripe opportunity ; but I see you have no 
look to help your state nor to assure you from treason's 
leisure. You give too much respite to rid your harm or 
shorten other's haste. Well : I will pray for you that God 
will unseal your eyes that have too long been shut." 



8o Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

Here, again, we have a situation very closely parallel 
to the one in Hamlet, and all these letters are connected, 
be it noted, with the younger Bothwell. 

The younger Bothwell had been practising against 
the life and liberty of James almost exactly as Claudius 
practised against the life of Hamlet ; but the most open 
practices, the most manifest insults, cannot sting James 
into action. Elizabeth is filled with wonder and horror 
that a monarch can submit to such insults. 

So Hamlet accuses himself of submission to insult : ^ 

" Am I a coward ? 
Who calls me villain ? Breaks my pate across ? 
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face ? 
Tweaks me by the nose ? gives me the lie i' the throat, 
As deep as to the lungs ? who does me this ? 
Ha! 
'Swoimds I should take it." 

After the conspiracy known as the "Spanish Blanks" 
Elizabeth writes to James : 

" If you do not rake it to the bottom, you will verify what 
many a wise man hath (viewing your proceedings) judged of 
your guiltiness of your own wrack. . . . 

" I have beheld of late, a strange dishonourable and 
dangerous pardon which, if it be true, j^ou have not only 
neglected yourself but wronged me ! " 

Another letter of vehement expostulation seems to 
belong to the year 1592 when James had been literally 
driven from place to place by the factious Bothwell 2 : 

" To redouble crimes so oft, I say, with your pardon, must 
to your charge, which never durst have been renewed if the 

1 Act II., ii. a Letter XLIV. 



James I. and Hamlet 8i 

first had received the condign reward ; for slacking of due 
correction engenders the bold minds for new crimes, ... I 
hear of so uncouth a way taken by some of your conventions, 
yea agreed to by your selfe that I must wonder how you will 
be clerk to such lessons. 

" . . . O Lord, what strange dreams hear I that would 
God they were so, for then at my waking I should find them 
fables. If you mean, therefore, to reign I exhort you to 
show yourself worthy of the place which never can be surely 
settled without a steady course held to make you loved and 
feared. I assure myself many have escaped your hands 
more for dread of your remissness than for love of the escaped ; 
so oft they see you cherishing some men for open crimes and 
so they mistrust more their revenge than your assurance. . . . 
And since it so likes your to demand my counsel, I find so 
many ways your state so unjoynted, that it needs a skilfuUer 
bone-setter than I to joyne each part in its right place." 

One may compare this with Hamlet's bitter cry ^ : 

" The time is out of joint : O cursed spite 
That ever I was born to set it right." 

In exactly the same way as Elizabeth piles up the 

indignities James has suffered, so Hamlet piles up those 

he endures himself ^ : 

" How stand I then, 
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain 'd. 
Excitements of my reason and my blood, 
And let all sleep ? while to my shame I see 
The imminent death of twenty thousand men. 
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame, 
Go to their graves like beds." 

In another letter Elizabeth points out to him how his 

laxness has caused corruption in the whole state : 

"A long-rooted malady, falling to many relapses, argues, 

1 Act I., v. 2 Act IV., iv. 



82 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

by reason that the body is so corrupt that it may never be 
sound. When great infections Ught on many it almost 
poisons the whole country." ^ 

Compare this with Hamlet : 

" How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable 
Seem to me all the uses of this world ! 
Fie on't ! ah fie ! 'tis an unweeded garden. 
That grows to seed ; things rank and gross in nature 
Possess it merely." ^ 

Again Elizabeth says : 

" If the variableness of Scotch affairs had not inured me 
with too old a custom I should never leave wondering at 
such strange and uncouth actions ; but I have so oft with 
careful eyes foreseen the evil-coming harms and . . . see 
them either not beheved or not redressed that I grow weary 
of such fruitless labour. One while I receive a writ of oblivion 
and foregiveness, then a revocation, with new additions of 
later consideration ; sometimes, some you call traitors with 
proclaim, and anon, there must be no proof allowed, though 
never so apparent, against them." 

Here, again, we have the likeness to Hamlet. Hamlet 
has proof after proof of the king's guilt, yet always 
demands more and more and is never, apparently, 
satisfied. 

"What thank may they give your mercy," EUzabeth con- 
tinues, " when no crime is tried ? . . . And for Bothwell, 
Jesus ! Did ever any muse more than I, that you could so 
quietly put up so temerous, indigne, a fact, and yet by your 
hand receiving assurance that all was pardoned and finished, 
I refer me to my own letter what doom I gave thereof. And 
now to hear all revoked and either scanted or denied and the 
wheel 'to turn to as ill a spoke." ^ 

1 Letter XLVIII. > Act I., ii. 

^ Quoted from Tytler, Answer LIII. 



James I. raid Hamlet 83 

Yet again (1593), James pardons Bothwell, and 
Elizabeth replies in the height of impatience and anger : 

" My Dear Brother — To sec so much, I rue my sight, that 
views the evident spectacle of a seduced king, abusing council 
and wry-guided kingdom. . . . 

" I doubt whether shame or sorrow have had the upper hand 
when I read your last lines to me. . . . Abuse not yourself 
so far. . . . Assure yourself no greater peril can ever befall 
you, nor any king else, than to take for payment evil accounts ; 
for they deride such and make their prey of your neglect. 
There is no prince alive, but if he show fear or yielding but 
he shall have tutors enough though he be out of minority. 
And when I remember what sore punishment these lewd 
traitors should have, then I read again, lest at first I mistook 
your mind ; but when the reviewing granted my lecture true, 
IvOrd ! what wonder grew in me, that you should correct 
them with benefits who deserve much severer correction. . . . 
Is it possible that you can swallow the taste of so bitter a 
drug more meet to purge you of them, than worthy of your 
kindly acceptance. 

" I never heard a more deriding scorn." 

Here, again, Elizabeth wonders at the disgraces and 
scorns to which James will submit just precisely as 
Hamlet wonders why he submits to such infamies and 
shames. 

Does it not look as if the mental malady in the two 
were identical ? Elizabeth and Shakespeare were both 
people of genius and they were analysing one and the 
same case. 

We may quote here an incident, no doubt among 
those alluded to by the queen, which seems to have an 
important bearing on Hamlet : 

" On 2ist July sentence of forfeiture was passed against 
hira (Bothwell) by parliament, all his property being con- 



84 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

fiscated, and his arms riven at the cross of Edinburgh. His 
friends thereupon determined to make a special effort upon 
his behalf. The Duke of Lennox and other noblemen secretly 
sympathised with him, on account of their jealousy of Maitland. 
On the evening of the 24th, after assembling their retainers 
in the neighbourhood of the palace, Bothwell in disguise was 
introduced into the king's chamber during his temporary 
absence. On returning, the king found Bothwell on his 
knees, with his drawn sword laid before him crying with a 
loud voice for pardon and mercy. 

" The king called out ' Treason ' ; the citizens of Edinburgh 
hurried in battle array into the inner court ; but the king, 
pacified by the assurances of those in attendance on him, 
commanded them to retire. Bothwell persisted that he 
did not come in * any manner of hostility, but in plain 
simplicity.' 

" To remove the king's manifest terror he offered to depart 
immediately and remain in banishment, or in any other part 
of the country till his day of trial. 

" The king permitted him to leave and an act of condonation 
and remission was passed in his favour but . . . the king 
remained ' in perpetual grief of mind,' affirming that he 
was virtually the captive of Bothwell and the other noblemen 
who had abetted him. . . . 

" On 14th August, he signed an agreement binding himself 
to pardon Bothwell and his adherents, and to restore them to 
their estates and honours, the agreement to be ratified by a 
parliament to be held in the following November ; but at a 
convention held at Stirling on 8tli September an attempt 
was made to modify the bargain, it being set forth as a con- 
dition of Bothwell's restoration that he should remain beyond 
seas during the king's pleasure. Matters soon drifted into 
the old unsatisfactory condition." ^ 

Now, here we surely have a very close approximation 
to one of the most curious scenes in Hamlet. James has 
suffered all kinds of outrages and indignities from the 

1 Diet. Nat. Biog. 



James I. and Hamlet 85 

younger Bothwell who has plotted against his life ; at last 
he has Bothwell on his knees before him, and apparently 
at his mercy ; Bothwell implores pardon and James 
hears the prayer and spares him ; but he does not and 
cannot alter their real relations which, soon after, assume 
the same unsatisfactory character. 

So Hamlet finds Claudius upon his knees, at prayer 
and defenceless ; he has Claudius at his mercy and could 
destroy him ; he spares him for the time, making the 
excuse that he does not want to send his soul to heaven ; 
all the same he knows that Claudius plots against his 
life, and that he is practically helpless in his toils ; in no 
real sense are their relations altered. 

In 1595 Bothwell's position became desperate : 

" His association with the Catholic carls proved fatal. 
The king demanded his excommunication by the kirk and 
although Bothwell wrote to the clergy of Edinburgh offering 
to receive their correction for whatever offence he had com- 
mitted he was on iSth February excommunicated by the 
presbytery of Edinburgh at the king's command." 

It looks very much as if this incident had suggested 
Hamlet's determination to spare Claudius until he had 
achieved his religious ruin, until he finds him about some 
act " that has no relish of salvation in't " ; this incident 
has startled many of Shakespeare's commentators who 
cannot believe that Hamlet is stating his motive correctly 
because it would be " too horrible " ; but if Shake- 
speare is simply dramatising history, then all we can 
say is that the parallel is remarkably complete. James 
did find Bothwell on his knees and at his mercy ; he did 
spare him, and he spared him until the time when 



86 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

Bothwell, at the king's request, was excommunicated 
and his rehgious ruin achieved. 

There is no trace of such an incident either in Saxo 
Grammaticus or in the Hystorie oj Hamhlet. 

Bothwell, one may note, had very often professed 
friendship towards the king, and had declared it im- 
possible to hate " where both benefits and blood compelled 
him to love." ^ 

One may compare this with the bitter irony of Hamlet's : 
" A little more than kin and less than kind." 

Elizabeth, as we have seen from the letters already 

quoted, was continually pointing out to James that he 

did not do his duty by his kingdom; the younger 

Bothwell provided the most conspicuous example of 

this neglect, but there were many other instances. The 

final result is that James' realm goes from bad to worse. 

" Weeds in the fields, if they be suffered, will quickly over- 
grow the corn, but subjects being dandled, will make their 
own reigns and forlet another reign." - 

Compare this once again with Hamlet's cry : 

" How weary, stale, Hat and unprofitable 
Seem to me all the uses of this world ! 
Fie on't : ah fie ! 'tis an unweeded garden. 
Grown to seed ; things rank and gross in nature 
Possess it merely." 

The resemblances between the situation dramatised 
in Hamlet and the situation revealed in the letters of 
Elizabeth arc so close that we might almost believe that 
Shakespeare had been leaning over the queen's shoulder 
while she wrote. 

» Diet. Nat. Biog. 2 Letter LVII. 



James I. and Hamlet 87 

Surely the most obvious explanation of such coin- 
cidences is that they were analysing the same curious 
mentahty. 

In this connection I may refer to Mr Bradley, who 
points out that there is undoubtedly a large element of 
lethargy in the character of Hamlet : 

" We are bound to consider the evidence which the text 
supplies of this, though it is usual to ignore it. When 
Hamlet mentions, as one possible cause of his inaction, his 
' thinking too precisely on the event,' he mentions another 
' bestial oblivion,' and the thing against which he inveighs in 
the greater part of that soliloquy (IV., iv.) is not the excess 
and misuse of reason (which for him here and always is god- 
Uke) ; but his bestial oblivion or dullness, this letting all 
sleep, this allowing of heaven-sent reason to ' fust unused.' 

' What is a man. 
If his chief good and market of his time, 
Be but to sleep and feed ? a beast, no more.' 

" So, in the soliloquy (II., ii.) he accuses himself of being ' a 
dull and muddy-mettled rascal ' who ' peaks like John-a- 
dreams unpregnant of his cause,' dully indifferent to his 
cause. So, when the Ghost appears to him the second time, 
he accuses himself of being tardy and lapsed in time ; and 
the Ghost speaks of his purpose as being almost blunted and 
bids him not to forget." ^ 

On the ordinary supposition that Hamlet is simply 
a psychological problem which happened to interest 
Shakespeare at the time, it has always been somewhat 
difficult to comprehend how the play could appeal to great 
popular audiences in the way it undoubtedly did, for it 
was one of the most frequently acted of all Shakespeare's 
tragedies. 

^ Shakespearean Tragedy. 



88 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

Revenge tragedies were common, but they were, as 
a rule, sufficiently simple in their appeal. Now Mr 
Robertson divines, in Kyd's original Hamlet, almost 
exactly such a tragedy where the stress was laid, as it 
is in Saxo and in the Hystorie oj Hamhlet, mainly upon 
the motive of revenge. 

But the problem dramatised in Hamlet is one of 
singular subtlety and complexity ; it is the problem 
of a man who sees what he ought to do, and yet cannot 
do it ; who permits people to heap upon him outrage 
after outrage, insult upon insult, and yet does not punish 
even when he has the offender in his power ; it is the 
problem of one who is ready to give the benefit of every 
doubt, who cannot believe even in reiterated evidences 
of crime and who, even when he is convinced, still goes 
on pardoning. 

Is the incapacity for action due to the fineness of a 
too refined nature in its conflict with a coarse world ? Is 
it mere sloth and cowardice and a want of princely, nay, 
of human dignity ? Certainly Hamlet does not spare 
himself. 

Whatever the solution of the problem may be, there 
is no doubt that the problem itself is the central interest 
of Shakespeare's play, and that there is not a trace of 
it in the original story. In the Amleth Saga the hero 
has to employ devious methods to attain his purpose ; 
but in the purpose itself he never falters or wavers, and 
we have no reason to imagine that the hero of Kyd's 
play differed greatl}^ To make the incapacity for action 
the very centre of a tragedy was a startling innovation, 
and a most curious and subtle problem to bring before 



James I, and Hamlet 89 

a popular audience. But, if the problem were really 
historical, if the problem concerned the character of 
the man whose succession to the crown was just then the 
chief question of practical politics, if the problem con- 
cerned the character of their own future monarch upon 
whom all the destiny of England, the destiny of each 
member of the audience, essentially depended, we can 
understand at once why Shakespeare selected a subject 
so unusual, and why it so greatly fascinated both his 
audience and himself. 

At any rate, one thing is certain. Shakespeare's 
central problem does not, so far as we know, exist in 
any of his so-called sources ; it does exist in the history 
— unmistakeable, definite and clear ; moreover, it was 
the precise historical problem which, at the exact 
moment Hamlet was written, was likely to interest 
Shakespeare's audience most. 

It may, of course, be only coincidence ; but this seems 
to me very improbable ; a great dramatist is not a person 
working in a void, independent of time and space ; 
every great dramatist has to deal with two materials : 
one is the stuff or substance of his own dramatic genius, 
the other is the mentality of his audience. 

It is and must be a main part of dramatic genius to 
utilise the susceptibilities and interests of the audience 
in the fullest way possible. 

Now, suppose that Shakespeare really desires to do 
this. His audience, just at that moment, are probably 
more interested in the question of the Scottish succession 
and the Essex conspiracy than in anything else upon 
earth. Suppose he wishes to avail himself of this 



go Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

interest and to dramatise Scottish history and the 
character of James. 

How will he set about it ? 

From the point of view of drama history is too diffuse ; 
its interest is distracted and dissipated. 

Thus the situation of James whose father has been 
murdered, and whose mother has married his father's 
murderer, this situation is, in itself, an intensely inter- 
esting one, the more so as the prince himself is claimed 
as " the avenger of his father " ; dramatically considered 
the situation has, however, one serious flaw — the flaw 
that the prince is an infant at the time, and cannot 
possibly pursue in person this " vengeance." 

Again, the whole of the relations between James and 
the younger Bothwell are singularly interesting as an 
illustration of the character of James — the doubts, the 
hesitancy, the reluctance to punish, the demanding ever 
fresh and fresh proofs, which proofs never satisfy, the 
refusal to be roused even by insults, even by manifest 
plots against his own life, all this is exceedingly inter- 
esting ; but it is really quite a different story from the 
story of his father's murder, and to put them both into 
a drama would be, quite inevitably, to diffuse and break 
the dramatic interest. 

It could not make a good play. An excellent drama 
can, however, be made by combining in one the parts 
played by the two Bothwells. There is nothing diffiicull 
in such a conception : the two belonged to the same 
family,! they were uncle and nephew, they held the 

1 The younger Bothwell on the mother's side ; on the father's he 
was a Stuart. 



James I. and Hamlet 91 

same title ; they were not very dissimilar in character ; 
even modern Scottish historians have remarked that the 
younger Bothwell seemed like a reincarnation of the elder. 

The device of putting the two in one is quite simple 
and obvious, and makes excellent drama : the crimes 
committed by Claudius are the crimes of the elder Bothwell 
which are far more striking and dramatic than the crimes 
of the younger Bothwell ; but the relation of Hamlet to 
Claudius is the relation of James to the younger Bothwell. 
Why not ? James was neglecting his duty to his 
kingdom just as thoroughly as Hamlet was neglecting 
his duty to his father, only the latter happens to be the 
thing which can, most effectively, be put upon the stage. 

Thus, instead of two stories with their interests diffused, 
we have one story with its interest enormously con- 
centrated. And there is this further advantage, that 
whereas no censorship would permit Shakespeare to 
dramatise Scottish history as it really occurred, the 
censorship could not prevent him from dramatising 
history, if he altered it to some extent, and called it 
Hamlet. 

This, it seems to me, is the essential part of the play, 
and this is the real reason why Shakespeare borrows a 
name and a situation and practically nothing else from 
the Amleth Saga. 

A similar method of construction is, we may point 
out, suggested by Shakespeare himself and in Hamlet 
also ; it is Hamlet's own method of dealing with the 
Gonzago story ; he selects a tale which resembles very 
closely indeed the actual details of his father's murder, 
he alters it to make it more like, and then, when the 



92 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

king is filled with horror and anger, Hamlet insists that 
** the story is extant and writ in choice Itahan." 

When we remember that this was exactly the method 
which Shakespeare and his company were in disgrace 
for employing in the case of Richard 11. , we must surely 
admit that our evidence is cumulative. 

There are many other resemblances to the character 
of James which may also be developed. 

Thus, as Professor Bradley has pointed out, the 
character of Hamlet, notwithstanding its curious 
hesitancy and indecision, shows a singular power of 
acting in sudden crises with vigour and strength ; it is 
as of a sudden emergency let loose a different strain in 
his nature ; thus, when he is on the voyage to England, 
he guesses the plan of the king against him, and sub- 
stitutes for his own name as the name of the person to 
be executed those of his two companions. 

The type of morality involved in this particular pro- 
ceeding has seriously shocked some critics ; but here 
we need only refer to it as proving Hamlet's capacity 
for swift action in emergency ; it is one of the few things 
that Shakespeare takes directly from the saga, and it 
has something about it of peculiar crudity but it serves 
to show that Shakespeare's full portrait of Hamlet in- 
cluded this power of swift action in emergency. 

Similar power of swift and decisive action is, of course, 
revealed in the final scene when Hamlet kills the king ; 
after all the seemingly endless delays he rushes to the 
point in a moment : ** Then venom, do thy work," and 
the work is done. 

Now this pecuUar contradiction, as we have seen. 



James I. and Hamlet 93 

was characteristic also of James, and was one of the 
things that most astonished his contemporaries. 
Burton says : 

" He was a very timid and irresolute man, and yet on 
more than one occasion he behaved with an amount of nerve 
and courage which the greatest of heroes could not have 
excelled. . . . People on the other side of the North Sea 
speak of his journey to bring home his wife as a thing which 
he surely would not have attempted had he known the perils 
of the coast of Norway in winter. Whether he knew what 
he incurred or not on that occasion, we have seen his con- 
duct on another ' when the peril was not of his own seeking. 
He held his own in the hand-to-hand struggle with young 
Ruthven. He reminded the young man of the presence he 
was in and the propriety of removing his liat. He corrected 
the mysterious man in armour when he was opening the 
wrong window. . . . 

Finally the struggle had taught him that his assailant wore 
secret armour, .so he told Ramsay to strike below it. It is 
known that men of a nervous temperament will, when at 
bay and desperate, become unconscious of their position, 
and act from a sort of mechanical influence, as if there were 
no danger near them. Are we so to account for these wonder- 
ful instances of presence of mind ? " 

Here, again, we have a historical trait exactly similar 
to a trait noticeable in Hamlet. 

Another curious trait in James's character was his 
indifference to dress. His mother had never been 
careless in this matter ; if not a lover of splendour in 
the same sense as Elizabeth, she had always been 
decorous and dignified and, on appropriate occasions, 
magnificent. 

James was singularly careless and unkingUke, to such 

^ The Gowry Conspiracy. 



94 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

an extent that he excited the derision of Enghsh visitors, 
and was jeered at for indecorum. 
Sir Anthony Weldon says : 

" In his diet, apparel and journeys he was very constant. 
In his apparel so constant as by his goodwill he would never 
change his clothes till almost worn out to rags . . . his 
fashion never ; inasmuch as one bringing to him ii hat of a 
Spanish block, he cast it from him, swearing he neither loved 
them nor their fashions. Another time, bringing him roses 
on his shoes, he asked them if they would make him a ruff- 
footed dove — one yard of sixpenny ribbon served that turn." 

Here, again, it is impossible not to see the likeness to 
Hamlet : Hamlet's indifference to dress and his scorn 
for the courtiers to whom it meaiis so much. 

Ophelia speaks of him as wearing disordered apparel ^ : 

" Lord Hamlet with his doublet all unbraced ; 
No hat upon his head ; his stockings foul'd 
Ungarter'd and down-gyved to his ancle " ; 

and Hamlet shows the utmost contempt for Osric " the 
water-fly," and for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. 

Other portions of Sir Anthony Weldon 's description 
may also be quoted : 

" He was veiy witty, and has as many ready, witty jests 
as any man living at which he would not smile himselfe, but 
deliver them in a grave and serious manner. . . . 

" He would make a great deal too bold with God in his passion 
both in cursing and swearing and one strain higher verging 
on blasphemy ; but would in his better temper sa}^ : ' He 
hoped God would not impute them as sins and lay them to 
his charge, seeing they proceeded from passion.' " 

" He was infinitely inclined to peace." 

" His chosen motto was : ' Beati pacifici.' " 

1 Act IL, i. 



James I. and Hamlet 95 

Here, again, we have traits which closely resemble 
those of Hamlet. Hamlet's wit and his ready jests are 
shown in many scenes. At the same time he does deliver 
his jests in a grave and serious manner ; particularly 
in his relations to Polonius and to Osric and Guildenstern 
he is full of irony. 

We have several examples of his cursing with regard 
to the king ; he accuses himself/ of cursing like a whore 
or a scullion : 

" Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words, 
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab, 
A scullion ! " 

As examples of James' witty sayings Weldon quotes : 
" I wonder not so much that women paint themselves, 
as that when they are painted, men can love them."' 

We may compare Hamlet 2 : " God has given you one face 
and you make yourselves another." 

Again, James was a student ; he was particularly 
fond, as we have seen, of discoursing on theology and 
philosophy ; he was also in the habit of taking tablets 
wherever he went to make notes ; his tablets were always 
0:1 hand, and this was a marked pecuharity of his. 
Hamlet, also, has this peculiarity, and shows it in a 
most extraordinary manner ; he even carries his tablets 
with him in his interview with the ghost, and notes down 
the fact that 

•' A man may smile and smile and be a villaui " ; 

it is surely the most extraordinary example recorded 
of the use of tablets and serves to show, at the least, 

1 Act II.. ii. 2 Act 111., i. 



96 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

that Hamlet must have been particularly addicted to their 
employment. In fact, it is difficult to see any motive for 
such a bizarre example except to show a personal trait. 

Hamlet is described by the queen as being " fat and 
scant of breath." James also was corpulent. " He was 
of middle stature," says Sir Anthony Weldon, " more 
corpulent through his clothes than in reality, his body 
yet fat enough." 

Hamlet is described as being thirty years of age,^ 
for the sexton came to his office when young Hamlet 
was born and says : "I have been sexton here, man and 
boy, for thirty years." 

James was actually about thirty-three when Hamlet 
was produced ; it was the custom, however, to state 
age in round numbers, and we occasionally find James 
mentioned as being thirty years of age when he came 
to the thronc.2 This is almost the only case in Shake- 
speare where a defniite age is given to the hero, and it 
looks as if there were a reason for it. 

Again we observe Hamlet's curious methods of cir- 
cumventing people, of finding out their intentions by 
means of tricks ; this is revealed most plainty in the 
case of Polonius ; but the same thing happens with 
Osric, with Rosencrantz, and with Guildenstern, also 
with the king. 

This, again, was a trait characteristic of James : 

" If he had not that extreme timidity with which he has 
often been charged, he certainty shrank from facing dangers ; 
and this shrinking was allied in early life with a habit of 

1 Act v., i. 

* See, for instance, Secret History of Four Last Monarchs, pub. 1691 



James I. and Hamlet 97 

cautious fencing with questioners, without much regard for 
truth, which was the natural outcome of his position among 
hostile parties." ^ 

So Sir Anthony Wcldon says of him : "He was very 
crafty and cunning in petty things, as the circumventing 
any great man." 

This, surely, exactly resembles the position of Hamlet. 
Hamlet fences with Polonius, with the king, with Osric, 
with Rosencrantz, and certainly without much regard 
to the truth ; at the same time, it is justified to the mind 
of the audience by the manifest peril in which he stands 
and by the fact that the people who surround him are 
inimical and hostile, intent on betraying him ; the 
audience cordially approves of his trick of outwitting 
his enemies by verbal subtleties. Hamlet's policy delivers 
him from many perils, and James also earned the reward 
of a similar skill. 

"He was," says Burton, "the first monarch of his race 
since the Jameses began who was to be permitted to reach 
the natural duration of his days ; for though his grandfather 
was not slain, his end was hastened by violence. When we 
trace the genealogic line of his house, we find it inaugurated 
by the murder of his father and the ruin of his mother, ending 
on the scaffold. ..." 

Now the James whom Shakespeare's audience were 
contemplating as their future king was the very person 
involved in these tragedies ; he had survived until his 
thirties, after being threatened with the most serious 
perils from and, indeed, even before his birth ; he had 
survived mainly by the devotion of a few most faithful 

1 Did. Nat. Biog. 
G 



qH IIjiiiilcl juid \\\v Scoliish wSuccc^ssiou 

sorvaiils like the luskinrs, and, from an extromcly early 
ago, by l\is own ijifls ; liis arts mipjht savour of deceit, 
but they suidy wen^ jxm inissible wIumi tlie extreme 
dant^er and peril of his situation was taken into account : 
" lie was the only one of his race since the Jameses began 
who was i^crmittcd to reach the natural duration of his 
days." 

Could any words be stronger? Do they not correspond 
with the situation of Hamlet who has only one devoted 
friend, and who is surroumled by every form alike of 
violence and of treachery ? 

Hut, it may be asked, if the character of UamU^t shows 
all these resemblances to that df James I., is it to be 
taken simply as a i)ortrait ? 

It does not s(VMn to me that Shakesi)eare's method 
is essiMitially on(^ of portraitun^ and. as I shall attemi)t 
to show laliM-. 1 fnul oth(M- clcnuMils in the charactiM- of 
Ibunlet besidts what he owes to James. It seems to nu^ 
that the more accurate way of stating the matter would 
be to sav that Shakc^speare takes the main conce])tiou 
of Hamlet and the situation of llamliM. from James and 
the situation of James. 

The central situation, tlu^ Orestes-like motive of the 
]^lav. that the murderer of the father has married the 
mother, is the situation of James; the central problem 
of the plav -the problem of the vacillating will, of the 
man who knows \\c ought to act but cannot act. of the 
man who is awari^ that he ought to ])uuish but cannot 
]>unish this is th(^ •i>robhMn of James's character. That 
hatr(\l of bUu^dsluHl which distinguishes Hamlet also, 
throughout his lift\ distinguished James ; a^ain we 



Janics T. jukI [r.'milcl 99 

liavo a similar lovo of i)liiI()S()pliic. disrussion with an 
inJoK'sl in s])iiils and i\u\ iiif'lilr.idi; of nainn^ ; we have 
(he Siunc lov(^ of dis])iit;Llioii willi (W(M"yl)()dy vviiom \u'. 
nit'cis, llic same ])ari"yin/-; o! indisciccl ()M(^slions and 
('S(;Li)iii|,^' fioin diriiciill siliialioiis by means of vcihal 
fence, llie same; feif^minfj of slii])idi1y wliith j^oes so far 
llia( lie is somcilimes snsjx'cied of madness; vv(; have a 
similar miso/^^yny, W(^ have the same cm ions i)o\ver of 
swiff and sndden aclion in crises nolwilhslandin/^^ Ww. 
vacillations, we have liu^ sanu' power of ])ilhy and willy 
saying's ; w(^ hav(^ a similar caich^sjlness of dress and 
a similar dislike of ])erfn!ned conrliers; we have even 
minor details snch as Ihe hahil of swearin/^, Ihe ns<; of 
lal)l(!ls, lh(; Ihirly yc^ars of a^v., Ihr. heinj,' " fal and scant 
of brealh." 

The iKiiiil I wish lo insi^,l on is aJways Ihal of (h<; 
I'^li/ahelhan andi<Mic<', and I asU, "("<»nld tlu-y l:iil lo see 
resemblances which are, ofi Ihc' one hand, so (lee]>, j)r(j- 
lonnd and vilal and, on Ihe other hand, so curiously 
detailed ?" 

It se(Mns to me that the play (tf II<nnhi is larf]^ely an 
a])])eal to their iiderest in [\\v\\ fnlinc kin/:^' : a use lor 
dramatic ])nrposes of his history, his sil nation, and th(; 
leading; tiaits in his chaiaclci. 

A rather cnrions ])oint may be noted here. Allen! ion 
has often 1)(kmi calh'd lo llu; clos(; connection wlii( h 
;i])])eais lo exist between II tini/rt -.iwi] M lUtsurc Jor Mvusurc. 
Now, the chaiactei of the Dnke in Measure J or Measure 
also shows mark(Ml rc^sinnblances to that of James J. ; 
but lluMc are two facts to be carefully observed ; one is 
Ihal the character of Ihe Duke is allogelhc-r inieiior U) 



100 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

that of Hamlet, it is not nearly so noble or so attractive, 
and the other is that the character of the Duke is 
more like that of the historic James as we usually con- 
ceive the latter to have been. I have dwelt on this 
elsewhere.^ 

Now, if Shakespeare takes the central conception of 
both these characters from the historic James, as he 
apparently does, the problem at once arises as to why 
these characters are in themselves so different. 

Now it appears to me that the answer to this is 
probably threefold. In the first place, Shakespeare, when 
he wrote Hamlet had not seen James I. ; at that date 
the Scottish king had not crossed the Border ; all that 
was known of him must have been eagerly canvassed ; 
but the man himself had never set foot in England. 
Before Shakespeare wrote Measure for Measure, both he 
and his audience had made the acquaintance of James, 
and had possibly found him less attractive on a nearer 
view. In the second place, Shakespeare quite probably 
intended Hamlet, in part at least, as a pamphlet in favour 
of the Scottish succession ; in such circumstances he 
would naturally do everything he could to invest the 
figure of the prince with glamour and with charm ; 
hence we have a philosophic and melancholy prince, 
seen against a background of dark crimes, a prince whose 
peace-loving nature makes him abhor the duty of blood- 
shed laid upon him, an enigmatic figure wayward and 
strange yet full of fascination. 

W^at are our prevailing feelings as we pursue the 
course of the play ? One of them surely is that we should 
^ Measure for Measure. (Heath of Boston.) 



James I. and Hamlet loi 

like to take Hamlet away from his surroundings which 
are unworthy of him, away from the Denmark which 
does not merit him, and introduce him to a nobler 
sphere. 

But is not this precisely and exactly the feeling which 
Shakespeare wished to create ? It is, at any rate, 
plausible. 

In the third place, and perhaps most important of 
all, I do not consider that Hamlet is solely a portrait 
of James I. ; it seems to me to contain much of Essex 
as Essex was in the last year of his hfe. I shall hope 
to demonstrate this later, and to show how those portions 
of the character which are psychologically inconsistent 
with the rest may have had their origin in this way. 
Here I need only state that I do not think Hamlet is a 
portrait of anyone. 



CHAPTER IV 

"the play within the play" and hamlet's voyage 
to england 

I WILL pass on to a consideration of what seem like further 
historical resemblances in the drama. 

After the Darnley murder, popular excitement showed 
itself in continually representing the scene of the murder, 
and thrusting these representations before the eyes of 
the people mainly concerned. The Lords of the Council 
exhibited a banner showing the two dead men — Darnley 
and his servant — beneath a tree, the little prince kneeling 
beside their bodies praying for vengeance, and a broken 
branch. 

Burton says : 

" A portion of the natural excitement of the time appears 
oddly enough to have expended itself in painting. Several 
representations seem to have been made of the discovery 
of the bodies, with more or less allegorical machinery ; and 
several other pictures made their appearance which, either 
through an allegoiy or an attempt to represent facts, gave 
shape to the feelings of their producers. Caricatures they 
could not be called, for they had a deadly earnest about them 
. . . they were deemed as signs of the times so important 
that some of them may now be found among the documents 
of the period. There is one in which an attempt is made to 
represent the whole scene of the murder . . . the shattered 
house, the Hotel of the Hamiltons beside it, the city gate 
and wall, the remnant of the old Kirk-of-the-Field, the bodies 
and the assembled crowd of citizens." 

102 



" The Play Within the Play " 103 

The banner used by the Lords of the Council was 
employed at Carberry Hill as a kind of sacred symbol ; 
it was shown to Mary after her captivity, and produced 
a dreadful impression upon her. 

Lingard says : 

" An hour did not elapse before Mary learned that she 
was a captive in the hands of unfeeling adversaries. At her 
entrance into the city she was met by a mob in the highest 
state of excitement : her ears were assailed with reproaches 
and imprecations ; and before her eyes was waved a banner, 
representing the body of her late husband, and the prince her 
son on his knees exclaiming, " Revenge my cause, O Lord." 
. . . During the two and twenty hours that she was confined 
in her solitary prison, the unhappy queen abandoned herself 
to the terrors which her situation inspired. From the street 
she was repeatedly seen at the window almost in a state of 
nudity ; and was often heard to call on the citizens conjuring 
them to aid and deliver their sovereign from the cruelty of 
traitors." 

Here, again, we surely have a very close likeness to the 
"play within the play" motive of Hamlet. Hamlet 
desires to reconstruct the murder before the very eyes 
of the guilty king ; since the whole drama is a stage 
presentation also, how else could it be shown ? The 
idea is exactly and precisely the same as that of the 
Scottish banners and paintings ; that of constructing 
graphic representations of the murder and thrusting 
them before the eyes of the guilty parties. We may 
observe, also, that Hamlet's play is largely a dumb 
show. 

Hamlet cries, "The play's the thing wherein Fll catch 
the conscience of the king," and the Scottish accusers 
exhibited the dreadful scene on the banner in precisely 



104 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

this way, and with this motive, to the persons whose 
guilt was suspected but of whose participation they 
were not assured, and the result was precisely the same 
betrayal of grief and horror and anguish. 

Nothing hke this play scene appears in either Saxo 
Grammaticus or in the Hystorie oj Hamblei, though it may 
have done in Kyd's play ; but, as I have already pointed 
out, anything anterior to the supposed date of that play 
(1587 or 1589) may have been used by him as readily as 
by Shakespeare, and the Scottish parallel certainly might 
have been employed. If Shakespeare really wished to 
dramatise history it is difficult to see how he could have 
arranged the dramatisation better or more effectively, the 
essence being the scenic representation which forces the 
guilty to betray themselves. 

I do not think this is the only historical reference in 
the part of Hamlet which relates to the players ; but the 
rest will have its due study later. 

Another historic parallel to be found in Hamlet is his 
voyage to England. This, of course, occurs in the 
original saga, but Shakespeare has changed its conclusion. 
In Saxo, Hamlet is sent to England with a secret message 
to the king, desiring him to put Hamlet to death ; Hamlet, 
however, suspects the deceit, alters the message, and 
substitutes one desiring the king of England to give 
his daughter in marriage to the noble youth ; " Nor 
was he satisfied with removing from himself the sentence 
of death, and passing the peril on to others, but added 
an entreaty that the king of Britain would grant his 
daughter in marriage to a youth of great judgment whom 
he was sending them." 



" The Play Within the Play " 105 

In the Hystorie of Hamhlet, we have exactly the same 
situation. All takes effect as Hamlet has planned. 

The King, having witnessed many extraordinary ex- 
amples of Hamlet's wisdom, gives him his daughter and 
Hamlet returns to his own country, takes his revenge, and 
ultimately, of course, claims his British bride : 

" Then the king adored the wisdom of Amleth as though 
it were inspired and gave him his daughter to wife ; accepting 
his bare word as though it were a witness from the skies." 

Now, in the saga, the real purport of this journey to 
England is to get Hamlet married to an English princess ; 
Shakespeare removes this motive altogether, for his 
Hamlet does not marry, nevertheless he retains the 
voyage. There is thus a very curious effect produced. 

Hamlet, who knows the designs the king has against 
his life, who knows that he ought to pursue his task of 
vengeance and punishment, nevertheless allows himself 
to be hurried out of the kingdom on a voyage which he 
must have been aware was excessively dangerous, from 
which he might never have returned. As more than 
one critic has pointed out this is most unfair to his un- 
fortunate country ; he leaves it in the power of a villain 
while he allows himself to go, without any real necessity, 
on a most perilous expedition from which he is only saved 
by chance. 

The effect is a curious mingling of hesitancy and rash- 
ness which is one of the difficulties of Hamlet's character 
and of the play. The whole adventure is without the 
strong, obvious and clear motive given in the saga. Why 
is it retained ? The answer would seem to be " because 
there is a real historical parallel and because this historical 



io6 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

parallel did genuinely supply an important element in 
the character Shakespeare was studying." 

James had received the promise of Anne of Denmark 
as his bride ; the marriage by proxy was solemnised 
in August 1589. A brilliant little fleet was appointed 
for conveying the bride home to Scotland ; but it was 
driven by storms into a port of Norway ; James thereupon 
determined to set out himself to bring home his bride, 
and actually did so ; the voyage at that time of the year 
was exceedingly dangerous, and the king's return was 
long delayed by storms. 

In the meantime, the younger Bothwell had been left 
to his own devices in the kingdom. 

Elizabeth blamed James as severely for his rashness 
in this episode as modern commentators have blamed 
Hamlet : 

" I do believe that God hath of his goodness more than your 
hide, prospered to good end your untimely and, if I dare tell 
you the truth, evil-seasoned journey, yet I may no longer stay 
but let you know. . . . And now to talk to you freely as paper 
may utter conceit. Accept my hourly care for your broken 
country, too, too much infected with the malady of strange 
humours and to receive no medicine so well compounded as 
if the owner make the mixture appropriated to the quality 
of the sickness. Know you my dear brother, for certain, that 
those ulcers that were too much skinned with the ' doulce- 
ness " of your applications were but falsely shaded and were 
filled within with much venom as hath burst out since your 
departure with most lewd offers to another Idng to enter 
your land."^ 

Shakespeare has removed the clear, effective, and 
powerful motive which the voyage had in the saga. Yet 
1 Letter XXXIV. 



" The Play Within the Play " 107 

he retains the incident. Why ? It certainly looks as 
if he had retained it as a temperamental trait because 
it shows a power of vigorous action in emergency with, 
at the same time, a certain rashness and weakness in the 
very circumstances which enable the vigour to be shown. 

It is interesting also to observe that the mysterious 
letters have a historical parallel in the affair known as 
the "Spanish blanks" which occurred shortly after 
James' voyage. 

Burton says : 

" In the same year — 1592 — occurred the incident called 
the " Spanish blanks " which disturbed the zealous Presby- 
terian party to an extent not easily realised by looking at 
the scanty materials by which it was produced. But in fact 
it was the mystery excited by imperfect evidence that created 
suspicion and terror. It was suspected that a man named 
Kerr, who was leaving Scotland by the West coast, had 
dangerous documents in his custody. The minister of Paisley, 
hearing of this, gathered some sturdy parishioners who 
seized and searched Kerr. They took from him eight papers 
called " the blanks." Each had upon it the concluding 
courtesies of a letter addressed to royalties. " De vostre 
majestic tres humble ct tres obesant servitor," and this was 
followed by one or more signatures." 

Otherwise these slips of paper had " no designation 
on the back, nor declaration of the causes for which they 
were sent, but blank and white paper on both sides except 
the said subscriptions." They were signed by the 
Catholic earls : Huntly, Errol, Angus, etc. The con- 
clusion arrived at was that the blanks were intended to 
be filled up by certain Jesuit emissaries and were, when 
so filled, to form an invitation to the king of Spain to 
send men to Scotland to assist in a Catholic rising. 



io8 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

James behaved in this affair according to his usual 
custom, and was particularly merciful to the offenders. 
Elizabeth, as her letters show, was greatly enraged, and 
once more demanded justice, but James punished no 
one. 

Now here, again, one notices a marked difference be- 
tween Shakespeare and his saga source. In the saga there 
is no question whatever of Amleth being on good terms 
with the king after the treacherous embassy ; having 
discovered the truth, Amleth returns to Denmark and 
proceeds at once to his revenge. He sets the banqueting 
hall on fire, burns most of the courtiers to death in their 
drunken sleep, and cuts off the head of the king in his 
own bedchamber. 

Shakespeare's ever-forgiving Hamlet, however, once 
more places himself on amiable terms with Claudius 
and, for the last time, attempts friendship ; exactly in 
the same way James once more forgave the Catholic earls 
and Bothwell. 

Once again we have a historic parallel. 



CHAPTER V 

POLONIUS, RIZZIO, AND BURLEIGH 

Other portions of Hamlet which appear to contain 
historical reminiscences are the scenes connected with 
Polonius. 

If the acconnt of the murder, for instance, be carefully 
compared with the saga on the one hand, and with Scottish 
history on the other, it will be found, I think, that it 
shows hardly any resemblances to the one but very close 
resemblances to the other. 

The saga reads : 

" Feng was purposely to absent himself, pretending affairs 
of great import. Amletli should be closeted alone with his 
mother in her chamber ; but a man should fust be com- 
missioned to place himself in a concealed part of the room 
and listen heedlully to what they talked about. For, if the 
son had any wits at all, he would not hesitate to speak out 
in the hearing of his mother or fear to trust himself to the 
fidelity of her who bore him. The speaker . . . zealously 
professed himself as the agent of the eavesdropping. Feng 
rejoiced at the scheme and departed on pretence of a long 
journey. Now he who had given this counsel repaired privily 
to the room where Amletli was shut up with his mother, and 
lay down skulking in the straw. But Amletli had his antidote 
for the treachery. Afraid of being heard by some eaves- 
dropper he at first resorted to his usual imbecile ways and 
crowed like a noisy cock, beating his arms together to 
mimic the flapping of wings. Then he mounted the straw 
and began to swing his body and jump again and again, 

109 



no Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

wishing to try if aught lurked there in hiding. FeeUng a 
lump beneath his feet he drove his sword into the spot and 
impaled him who lay hid. Then he dragged him from his 
concealment and slew him. Then, cutting his body into 
morsels, he seethed it in boiling water and flung it through 
the mouth of an open sewer for the swine to eat, bestrewing 
the stinking mire with his helpless limbs. . . , 

"When Feng returned nowhere could he find the man who 
had suggested the treacherous espial ; he searched for him 
long and carefully, but none said they had seen him any- 
where. Amleth, among others, was asked in jest if he had 
come across any trace of him, and replied that the man had 
gone to the sewer but had fallen to its bottom and been 
stifled by the floods of filth, and that then he had been 
devoured by the swine that came up all about the place. ^ 

The Hysforie of Hamhlet gives substantially the same 
tale ; it says that Hamlet cut the body into pieces, boiled 
it, and then cast it into an open vault or privy, so that 
it might serve as food for the pigs. 

Now, here there is one point of resemblance with 
Shakespeare's Hamlet ; that is the motive given to the 
eavesdropper who is to report Hamlet's confidences 
to his mother, but all the rest is entirely unlike. 

What has Shakespeare's Hamlet in common with this 
grotesque clown who crows like a cock, and with this 
hideous barbarian who boils the body of his victim and 
then throws it through a sewer to the pigs ? 

Turn now to Scottish history and see what it says of 
the murder of Rizzio : 

Signor David became the queen's inseparable companion 
in the council room and the cabinet. At all hours of the day 
he was to be found with her in her apartments. . . . He 

^ Saxo Gramma ticus. 



Polonius, Rizzio and Burleigh iii 

was often alone with her until midnight. He had the control 
of all the business of the state. . . . Darnley went one night 
between twelve and one to the queen's room. Finding the 
door locked he knocked, but could get no answer . . . after 
a long time the Queen drew the bolt ... he entered and she 
appeared to be alone but, on searching, he found Rizzio half- 
dressed in a closet. . . . Darnley's word was not a good one, 
but that was what he said. . . . Darnley desired the dramatic 
revenge of killing Rizzio in the queen's presence. . . . The 
conspirators ascended the winding stairs from Darnley's 
room . . . Darnley entered . . . supper was on the table 
. . . the queen asked Darnley if he had supped." ^ 

So the scene proceeds ; Rizzio calls loudly for help, 
but he is stabbed ; Darnley's dagger is left in the body 
so that he may be clearly incriminated, the body itself 
is dragged down a staircase and flung upon a chest. . . . 
The queen lamented bitterly for him : " Poor David ! 
Good and faithful servant. May God have mercy on 
your soul." 

Afterwards, we may remember, Darnley was recon- 
ciled to the queen and showed or affected to show bitter 
repentance for his share in the murder. The Lords 
Politic sat for several days to consider the murder ; 
but, since they feared to accuse anyone, nothing was 
done. 

Now, here, we surely have far closer resemblances 
to the scene in Hamlet though, as in the other parallels, 
the scene is dramatised by isolating and concentrating ; 
two scenes are run into one, the scene where Darnley 
alone discovered (or said he discovered) Rizzio, and the 
scene of the murder. 

^ Froude. 



112 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

We have the discovery by the hero alone, we have 
the stabbing with the hero's weapon in the dead man's 
body. We have the queen's bitter lament for the " good 
old man " ^ and for the " rash and bloody deed." Hamlet 
disposes of the body " by a staircase," and the staircase 
played a principal part in the Rizzio murder. 

We may also observe that Hamlet's gruesome remark 
about Polonius being " at supper, not where he eats 
but where he is eaten," 2 seems like a macabre reference 
to the Rizzio murder where the victim also was found 
" at supper " ; the same may be said of the remark 
that " a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en 
at him," which, again, looks Irke a macabre reference 
to the wearisome and futile sittings of the " Lords 
Politic " in considering the murder. Any of these 
references might be accidental if it stood alone ; it is, 
as always, the combination which is the convincing 
thing. 

We may observe that the intimacy of Polonius with 
the queen is really close ; he is not, like the eavesdropper 
in the saga, a person with whom she has no intimate 
concern ; he is a genuinely trusted councillor. 

It may be said that the Rizzio murder belongs to 
Darnley and not to James I., but it had a close and 
vital connection with the group of historic events, and 
was in itself, a thing which probably determined the 
choice, magnificent dramatic material. 

We may also observe that the whole scene is, as it 
were, set apart in the play and stands detached from the 
main action. There is, again, the statement that Hamlet 
1 Act IV.. i. 2 Act IV.. iii. 



Polonius, Rizzio and Burleigh 113 

repents his deed, for, according to the queen " he weeps 
for what is done," and she, at any rate, desires to shield 
and protect him. All this is foreign to the saga, but 
does occur in the history. Darnley professed penitence 
and the queen did protect him. I may also point out 
that the other reference to the Rizzio murder occurred 
in the first scene where the ghost appeared to Hamlet, 
and in this scene with the queen the ghost appears 
again. There is, apparently, a logical and dramatic 
connection between the two. 

Moberley has a note on the lines : 

" Indeed this coimcillor 
Is now most still, most secret and most grave 
Who was in life a foolish prating knave." 

He observes that they arc almost exactly the same words 
used by the porter at Holyrood, when Rizzio's body 
was placed on a chest near his lodge. 

But we do not, I think, dispose of the historical 
resemblances in the character of Polonius by saying that 
his death resembles that of Rizzio's. It has more than 
once been pointed out that he shows a likeness to 
Burleigh, and this, also, appears to be true. We may 
observe that Burleigh died in the year 1598, shortly 
before Hamlet was produced ; he had died at the 
advanced age of seventy-eight, and was thought by many 
to have been in his dotage ; even Elizabeth in her wrath 
occasionally accused him of dotage.^ 

Burleigh had been the bitter enemy of Shakespeare's 

^ Martin Hume, Burleigh. 
H 



114 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

patrons — Essex and Southampton, and it was generally 
believed that the Cecils between them had lured Essex 
to his ruin. The popular mind also ascribed to Burleigh 
enmity against the Scottish succession. 

Now, if Burleigh were the bitter enemy of Shakespeare's 
friends, if he were very generally unpopular and mis- 
trusted, if he were believed to be an enemy to the 
Scottish succession, Shakespeare might very naturally 
represent him as another of the main enemies of his 
philosophic prince, and that is what he appears to have 
done, for the resemblances between Burleigh and Polonius 
seem too great to be ascribed to any form of accident. 

In the first place we may note that the original form 
of the name was Corambis and not Polonius, and that 
Corambis does suggest Cecil and Burleigh. 

Polonius, throughout the play, stands isolated as the 
one person who does really enjoy the royal confidence; 
he is an old man, and no other councillor of equal rank 
anywhere appears. This corresponds almost precisely 
with the position held by Burleigh ; he had, for the greater 
part of his reign, been among Elizabeth's chief councillors, 
and the death of Walsingham and others left him isolated 
in her service, surviving almost all the men of his own 
generation. 

Cecil was a man of learning, and Polonius obviously 
desires to be esteemed as such. Cecil had been closely 
associated with some of the chief classical scholars of 
the day, Cheke for example, and Polonius makes a boast 
of his classical learning : ^ " Seneca cannot be too heavy, 
nor Plautus too light." 

1 Act II., ii. 



Polonius, Rizzio and Burleigh 115 

Cecil, in his youth, had played a prominent part in 
Cambridge, and was proud to remain connected with the 
university, and Polonius also alludes to his life in the 
university and his taking part in the university plays. ^ 
" I did enact Juhus Caesar ; I was killed i' the Capitol ; 
Brutus killed me." 

We may also remember, in this connection, that when 
William Cecil died, he was still Chancellor of the Uni- 
versity of Cambridge ; there can be no doubt both from 
Hamlet's question, and from his reply, that Polonius 
liked to associate himself with the university as Cecil did. 

Cecil had one romance, and one romance only, in his 
life, that was when he married a penniless bride — Mary 
Cheke, the sister of the great Greek scholar ; the marriage 
was vehemently opposed by his family, but Cecil es- 
poused her in secret. 

Now, according to his own account, Polonius also 
had experienced a romantic love-affair in his youth : 
'' truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love, 
very near this." 2 

This particular speech has nearly alwaj^s been con- 
sidered as a pure absurdity ; but it would be even more 
ironically amusing if the audience believed it literally 
true. 

Again, Burleigh's eldest son — Thomas Cecil — was a 
youth of very wayward life ; his licentiousness and 
irregularity occasioned his father great distress and, 
during his residence in Paris, his father wrote letters 
to him full of wise maxims for his guidance ; he also 
instructed friends to watch over him, and bring him 

^ Act III., ii. 2 Act II., ii. 



ii6 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

reports of his son's behaviour. So Polonius has a son 
—Laertes — whom he suspects of irregular Ufe ; Polonius 
provides that his son, when he goes to Paris, shall be 
carefully watched, and that reports on his behaviour 
shall be prepared by Reynaldo. 

I will place side by side the parallels that seem to 
me most pertinent, pointing out first that there is no 
resemblance whatever in the saga source. 

" Amidst his manifold public anxieties Cecil had to bear 
his share of private trouble. . . . Thomas, his only son by 
his first marriage with Mary Cheke was now (1561) a young 
man of twenty, and in order that he might receive the polish 
fitting to the heir of a great personage, his father consulted 
Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, the Ambassador in Paris, in the 
Spring of 1561, with the idea of sending him thither. A 
subsequent recommendation of Thomas Windebank, the 
young man's governor, to the effect that it would be well to 
accept Throgmorton 's offer, although Sir William Cecil was 
loath to trespass on his friend's hospitality, " in order that the 
youth might learn, not only at table but otherwise, according 
to his estate," leads us to the conclusion that Thomas Cecil 
had not hitherto been an apt scholar . . . from the first it 
was seen that the father was misgiving and anxious. Cecil 
was a reserved man, full of public affairs ; but this corre- 
spondence proves that he was also a man of deep family 
affections, and above all, that he regarded with horror the 
idea that any scandal should attach to his honoured name. 
In his first letter to his son he strikes the note of distrust. . . . 
" He wishes him God's blessing, but how he inclines himself 
to deserve it he knows not." None of his son's three letters, 
he explains, makes any mention of the expense he is incurring. 
... To Windebank the father is more outspoken. How 
are they spending their time, he asks, and heartily prays that 
Thomas may serve God with fear and reverence. But 
Thomas seems to have done nothing of the sort ; for, in 
nearly every letter, Windebank urges Sir William to repeat 



Polonius, Rizzio and Burleigh 117 

his injunctions about prayer to his son. . . . But the scape- 
grace paid httle heed. . . . Rumour of his ill-behaviour 
reached Sir William, not at first from Windebank. In March 
1562 an angry and indignant letter went from Cecil to his 
son, reproaching him for his bad conduct. There was no 
amendment he said, and all who came to Paris gave him the 
character of "a dissolute, slothful, negligent and careless 
young man and the letter is signed ' your father of an un- 
worthy son.' " 

A week later Cecil writes : " Windebank, I am here 
used to pains and troubles, but none creep so near my 
heart as does this of my lewd son. . . . Good Windebank, 
consult my dear friend Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, to whom 
I have referred the whole. . . . If ye shall come with 
him (i.e. Thomas) to cover the shame, let it appear to 
be by reason of the troubles there." ^ 

We may compare this with Hamlet ^ : 

Pol. Give him this money and these notes, Reynaldo. 

Rey. I will, my lord. 

Pol. You shall do marvellous wisely, good Reynaldo, 
Before you visit him, to make inquire 
Of his behaviour. 

Rey. My lord, I did intend it. 

Pol. Marry, well said ; very well said. Look you, sir. 
Inquire me first what Danskers are in Paris ; 
And how, and who, what means, and where they keep, 

. . . and finding 
By this encompassment and drift of question 
That they do know my son, come you more nearer. 
Than your particular demands will touch it : 

. . . put on him 
What forgeries you please ; marry, none so rank 
As may dishonour him ; take heed of that ; 

1 Martin Hume, Burleigh. ' Act II., i. 



ii8 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

But, sir, such wanton wild and usual slips 
As are companions noted and most known 
To youth and liberty. 

Rey. As gaming, my lord. 

Pol. Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing, quarrelling, 
Drabbing: you may go so far." 

Now, surely we notice here an essentially similar 
situation to the one given in Burleigh's life ; the father 
an immaculate, all-wise councillor at home, the spend- 
thrift son leading a licentious life in Paris, and anyone 
who knows the father encouraged to give reports on the 
son's behaviour which the father anticipates, with only 
too much justice, will almost certainly be evil reports. 

Cecil wrote a number of maxims for the guidance of 
his son, and these maxims show a remarkable likeness 
to those given by Polonius to Laertes. 

" If his own conduct was ruled," says Martin Hume, " as 
some of his actions were by the maxims which in middle age 
he had laid down for his favourite son, he must have been a 
marvel of prudence and wisdom. Like the usual recommenda- 
tions of age to youth, many of these precepts simply inculcate 
moderation, religion, virtue and other obviously good qualities ; 
but here and there Cecil's own philosophy of life comes out, 
and some of the reasons for his success are exhibited. " Let 
thy hospitality be moderate . . . rather plentiful than 
sparing, for I never knew any man grow poor by keeping an 
orderly table. . . . Beware thou spendest not more than 
three of four parts of thy revenue, and not above a third 
part of that in thy house." 

" Beware of being surety for thy best friends ; he that 
payeth another man's debts seeketh his own decay." 

" Be sure to keep some great man thy friend, but trouble 
him not with trifles ; compliment him often with many, yet 
small gifts." 



Polonius, Rizzio and Burleigh 119 

" Towards thy superiors be humble, yet generous ; with 
thine equals familiar yet respectful ; towards these inferiors 
show much humanity and some familiarity, as to bow the 
body, stretch forth the hand and to uncover the head." 

" Trust not any man with thy life, credit or estate, for it is 
mere folly for a man to entrust himself to his friend." 

We may compare with this Polonius ^ : 

" Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar. 
Those friends thou hast and their adoption tried. 
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel ; 
But do not dull thy psalm with entertainment. 
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware 
Of entrance to a quarrel ; but being in, 
Bear't, that the opposed may beware of thee. 
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice. 

' ' Neither a borrower nor a lender be. 
For loan oft loses both itself and friend. 
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry." 

Martin Hume sums up Burleigh's proverbs by saying : 

" Such maxims as these evidently enshrine much of his own 
temper, and throughout his career he rarely seems to have 
violated them. His was a selfish and ungenerous gospel, 
but a prudent and circumspect one." 

Exactly the same might be said of Shakespeare's 
Polonius. This particular fact, that the maxims of 
Polonius strongly resemble those of Burleigh— was 
pointed out by George Russell French in 1869. 

Again, one observes the omnipresence of Polonius ; 
he manages everything, he interferes in everything, he 

1 Act I., iii. 



120 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

keeps everything in his own hands. This was certainly 
true also of Cecil, who had a passion for detail : 

" Everything seemed to pass through his hands. No matter 
was too small or too large to claim attention. His household 
biographer says of him that he worked incessantly, except 
at meal times when he unbent and chatted wittily to his 
friends, but never of business." ^ 

Cecil had a peculiar method of drawing up documents 
touching matters of state : thus he would consider all 
the reasons for and against a particular action, stating 
its advantages and disadvantages in the most elaborate 
way and with meticulous care of detail. It is in just 
the same close and elaborate way that Polonius displays 
his ideas before the king. Everything is surveyed, not 
a detail omitted.^ 

" He repulsed — a short tale to make . . . 
Fell into a sadness, then into a fast. 
Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness. 
Thence to a lightness, and, by this declension. 
Into the madness wherein now he raves. 
And all we mourn for." 

This is an admirable satire on the type of man who, 
like Cecil, prides himself on the logical, methodical de- 
velopment of detail. 

Cecil was emphatically a man of peace ; in politics 
it was his great aim to keep out of war ; in private life 
he disUked the idea of a military career for his son 
Thomas, and he was a person with whom everybody 
found it very difficult to quarrel ; he kept the peace 
with Leicester, and with Essex in spite of infinite pro- 
^ Martin Hume. 2 ^^t II., ii. 



Polonius, Rizzio and Burleigh 121 

vocation .; Essex, especially, was given to taunting and 
tormenting him ; but, when Cecil was unable to avoid 
a quarrel in any other way, he was accustomed to 
develop a timely fit of gout, and retire to his own house. 

We see this same trait in Polonius who carefully 
advises Laertes against quarrels : " Beware of entrance 
to a quarrel," and who will put up with almost every- 
thing from Hamlet in order to avoid an overt dispute, 
even, as Cecil did from Essex, with the most contemptuous 
mocking. 

Cecil employed spying and eavesdropping as poHtical 
weapons to a quite amazing extent : 

" Spies and secret agents paid by him were in every court 
and in every camp . . . the EngHsh Catholic nobles were 
closely watched and for a month every line the Spanish 
ambassador wrote was conveyed to Cecil by Borghese. Once, 
early in May, the bishop's courier with important letters for 
the Duchess of Parma, was stopped two miles beyond Graves- 
end by pretended highwaymen who were really gentlemen 
(the brothers Cobham) in Cecil's pay, and the man was 
detained while the letters were sent to the Secretary to be 
deciphered and copied." ^ 

The Dictionary of National Biography states the matter 
thus : 

" His life began to be threatened ; assassins were bribed 
to slay him and the queen : the murder of both or either, it 
was taught, would be something more glorious than mere 
justifiable homicide. Against the new doctrine and its 
desperate disciples it seemed to Cecil that extraordinary 
precautions were needed, and for the next twenty years he 
kept a small army of spies and informers in his pay who were 
his detective police, and he used it without scruple to get 

^ Martin Hume. 



122 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

information when it was needed, to keep watch upon the 
sayings and doings of suspected characters at home and 
abroad. They were a vile band, and the employment of 
such instruments could not but bring some measure of dis- 
honour upon their employer." 

Intercepted letters and the employment of spies were, 
then, a quite conspicuous and notorious part of Cecil's 
statecraft, and they are certainly made especially 
characteristic of Shakespeare's Polonius. Polonius 
intercepts the letters from Hamlet to his daughter ; 
he appropriates Hamlet's most intimate correspondence, 
carries it to the king, and discusses it without a moment's 
shame or hesitation : he and the king play the eaves- 
dropper during Hamlet's interview with Ophelia : he 
himself spies upon Hamlet's interview with his mother. 
It is impossible not to see that these things are made 
both futile and hateful in Polonius, and they were precisely 
the things that were detested in Cecil. 

It is also worthy of note that Burleigh took the utmost 
care not to conduct marriage projects for his daughter 
in a way that might suggest he was using her to further 
his own interests. 

" How careful he was to avoid all cause for doubt is seen 
by his answer to Lord Shrewsbury's offer of his son as a 
husband for one of Burleigh's daughters. . . . The match 
proposed was a good one and the Lord Treasurer — a new 
noble — was flattered and pleased by the offer." ^ 

He refused it, however, because Shrewsbury was in 
charge of the Queen of Scots, and he feared the suspicion 
of intrigues. 

" A similar but more flattering offer was made by the Earl 
^Martin Hume. 



Polonius, Rizzio and Burleigh 123 

of Essex in 1573 on behalf of his son ; but this also was 
declined." 

Cecil, in fact, was always particularly careful not to 
let Elizabeth or anyone else think that ambition for 
his daughter could tempt him into unwise poHtical 
plans. 

In exactly the same way we find Polonius guarding 
himself against any suspicion that he may have en- 
couraged Hamlet's advances to Ophelia. " The 
king asks ^ : " How hath she received his love ? " and 
Polonius enquires, " What do you think of me ? " 
The king replies : " As of a man faithful and honour- 
able " ; Polonius proceeds to explain that, such being 
the case, he could not possibly have encouraged the 
love between Hamlet and his daughter ; but he had 
informed the latter that she must " lock herself " from 
the prince. 

There is a further curious parallel in the fact that 
when Cecil's daughter — Elizabeth — married De Vere, 
Earl of Oxford — the husband turned sulky, separated 
himself from his wife, and declared that it was Cecil's 
fault for influencing his wife against him. 

" A few days later Burghley had reason to be still more 
angry with Oxford himself, though with his reverence for 
rank he appears to have treated him with inexhaustible 
patience and forbearance. . . . Oxford declined to meet his 
wife or to hold any communication with her ; Burghley 
reasoned, remonstrated, and besought in vain. Oxford was 
sulky and intractable. His wife, he said, had been influenced 
by her parents against him and he would have nothing more 
to do with her." 

1 Act II., ii. 



124 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

So, also, in the drama we find Polonius interfering 
between his daughter and her lover, we find his machina- 
tions so successful that Hamlet turns sulky, and is 
alienated from Ophelia for good. 

Other significant details may be observed. 

Cecil was a new man, and nothing annoyed him more 
than to have the fact called to his attention. " The 
most artful of his enemies, Father Persons, well knew the 
weak point in his armour, and wounded him to the quick 
in his books, in which he pretended to show that the 
Lord Treasurer was of base origin, his father a tavern- 
keeper, and he himself a bell-ringer. We have seen in 
a former case that attacks upon his ancestry almost 
alone aroused Lord Burleigh's anger." \, 

Hamlet, we may remember, taunts Polonius with 
following a base trade, with being a fishmonger ; Polonius 
repudiates the idea with scorn, to which Hamlet retorts : 
" Then, I would you were so honest a man." 2 

There is probably more than one meaning here, but 
the most obvious is a taunt at a low origin. 

Again Ophelia sings songs of lamentation one of which 
seems obviously intended for her father. "He is dead 
and gone " ; she confuses him with a religious man : "his 
cockle hat and staff And his sandal shoon." ^ 

Towards the end of Burleigh's life there was, apparently, 
a standing jest about him in the character of a religious 
man, a hermit. 

Thus, Martin Hume refers to the queen's visit to 
Theobalds, and to a letter presented by a man dressed 
as a hermit ; the letter reminded her that the last time 

1 Martin Hume. 2 Act IL, ii ^ Act IV., v. 



Polonius, Rizzio and Burleigh 125 

she came " his founder, upon a strange conceit, to feed 
his own humour, had placed the hermit contrary to his 
profession in his house, whilst he (Burghley) had retired 
to the hermit's poor cell." 

Yet more curious parallels may be quoted. In a 
strange letter to Essex, Lord Henry Howard exults that 
" the dromedary that would have won the favour of the 
Queen of Sabez is almost enraged " (meaning Burleigh by 
the dromedary), and asks the earl whether " he cannot 
drag out the old leviathan and his cub" (meaning the 
two Cecils). We may surely compare this with Hamlet's 
conversation with Polonius : 

Ham. Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a 

camel ? 
Pol. By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed. 
Ham. Methinks it is like a weasel. 
Pol. It is backed like a weasel. 
Ham. Or like a whale ? 
Pol. Very like a whale. ^ 

When we remember that Shakespeare would, in all 
human probability, have had access to the Essex corre- 
spondence shown by Essex himself, we can see the point 
still more strongly. 

It is hardly necessary to show, how, in the corre- 
spondence of the time, such as that of Standen and 
Anthony Bacon, Burleigh is continually alluded to with 
contempt. Thus Standen writes to Anthony Bacon, 
March 1595, that the queen paid no heed to Burleigh, 
when he protested against the expedition to Cadiz : 
" When she saw it booted not to stay him, she said he 
was a ' froward old fool.' " 

1 Act in., ii. 



126 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

Anthony, even in his correspondence with Lady Anne 
Bacon, refers to Burleigh continually as " the old man." 

This is the general tone of Hamlet to Polonius. 
Burleigh seems to have done his utmost to conciHate 
Essex, and Anthony Bacon speaks of Burleigh's humili- 
ation with pleasure : " Our Earl hath made the old 
Fox to crouch and whine." The humiUation of Burleigh 
by his scornful rival was, indeed, one of the standing 
jests of the court. 

I may also quote in this connection Jonson's estimate 
of the character of Polonius : 

" Polonius is a man bred in courts, exercised in business, 
stored with observation, confident in his knowledge, proud 
of his eloquence and declining into dotage, . . . This idea 
of dotage encroaching upon wisdom will solve all the pheno- 
mena of the character of Polonius." 

Now, it does not seem to me possible that an Eliza- 
bethan audience could overlook the resemblances between 
Polonius and Burleigh, they are at once so wide and all- 
embracing and so minute and detailed. 

We have the fact that each is a councillor, almost 
supreme in his ofhce, isolated in his generation with no 
person of equal authority near him. Each has a passion 
for detail, for personal management, for analysing 
matters with the minutest care. Each has the habit of 
giving worldly-wise maxims to a son, maxims which are 
full of prudence but totally lacking in generosity and 
unselfishness, maxims which are sometimes almost word 
for word the same. Each has a spendthrift son, who goes 
to Paris and who receives many instructions from his 



Polonius, Rizzio and Burleigh 127 

father, a licentious son who is watched by his father's 
orders, and reports upon whom are brought home by the 
father's commands. Each takes the same care not to 
aim too high in a daughter's marriage lest he should 
compromise his own position. Each causes a separation 
between his daughter and the man she loves because 
the daughter is believed to be completely the father's 
agent and his decoy. Each has the same methods of 
statecraft, by intercepting letters of the most private 
nature, by shameless, undignified incessant spying, 
spying practised upon all possible occasions. Each has 
the same reverence for rank, the same interest in the 
university and university life, the same assumption of 
classical scholarship, the same dishke of quarrels, the 
same willingness to bear insults rather than resent them. 

Each is insulted by being compared to various animals, 
a camel, a weasel, and a whale, on one side, a dromedary, 
a fox and a whale on the other. Each is made a public 
butt by a brilliant young man, by Hamlet in the one case, 
and by the Earl of Essex in the other. 

It is difficult to see how Shakespeare could have got 
more resemblances into the brief space at his disposal. 
Add to this the fact that the Cecils were the bitter 
enemies of Essex and his party, that it was the son of 
Burleigh who has supposed to have triumphed over 
and destroyed the unhappy Essex, and we have a motive 
for Shakespeare's satire of the most powerful and cogent 
kind. 

It does not seem to me particularly difficult to see 
what Shakespeare's method is. Burleigh was just pre- 
cisely one of the characters who would interest his — 



128 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

Shakespeare's — audience most, and who really did 
present a magnificent subject for study. On the other 
hand, from the dramatic point of view, Burleigh had one 
immense disadvantage : that nothing in particular had 
ever happened to him, and that he died quite respectably 
and tranquilly in his bed. The murder of Rizzio was, 
however, one of the most dramatic events in recorded 
history ; Shakespeare, therefore, combines the character 
of Burleigh with the end of Rizzio. The dramatic motive 
for doing so is just as clear and definite as the dramatic 
motive for combining the parts of the two Bothwells 
in one, and calling them both Claudius. 

We have, of course, a real parallel between Rizzio and 
Cecil ; both were men put in a position of supreme trust 
and wielding immense power by secret and underhand 
methods ; both were regarded as unprincipled and in- 
triguers, and both were objects of detestation and disHke. 

Moreover, the uniting in one of the two characters 
stitches, as it were, the two parts of the drama together ; 
it brings the James I. part into close relation with the 
Essex part. 



CHAPTER VI 

OPHELIA 

I WILL turn now to another portion of the play : that 
connected with OpheHa. Let us note at the outset 
three things : 

(i) That there is an obvious dramatic motive for 
adding this love story to the play. 

(2) That it can hardly have any relation to the history 
of James I. 

(3) That it cannot fairly be said to be suggested by 
the saga source. I will deal with these points in order. 

(i) The dramatic motive for the addition of Ophelia's 
story is plain enough ; it adds greatly to the interest 
of Hamlet as a play, and to the interest of the prince 
himself as a character. Just as the addition of the 
story of Marguerite to that of Faust increases the value 
of the drama by adding pathos and tenderness to some- 
thing that would otherwise be too purely intellectual, 
so does the addition of Ophelia's story increase by its 
pathos the value of Hamlet. 

(2) Apparently, also, this portion of the play has 
nothing whatever to do with James I. James married, 
as most princes marry, in the same conventional and 
well-accepted way, and the only romantic circumstance 
connected with his marriage was the voyage to bring his 
bride home to Scotland, which has already been discussed. 
I 3-9 



130 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

(3) Neither does the saga give much suggestion. Saxo 
recounts how Amleth's enemies attempt to employ a 
certain woman as a decoy ; they plan that she shall entice 
the prince, who is pretending madness, to make love to 
her, and so obtain possession of his secrets ; Amleth, 
however, is forewarned by a friend who fastens a piece 
of straw to a horse-fly, and sends it past the place where 
Amleth lurks. Amleth detects the meaning of this 
somewhat fantastic device ; he drags the woman off 
into a remote covert where he violates her, but without 
revealing anything or betraying himself in any way at 
all. She is so deeply ashamed that she herself denies 
any connection between them, and the trap thus proves 
of no avail. 

The Hystorie of Hamhlet smooths out some of the 
worst absurdities from this narrative and says that the 
lady had " from her infancy loved and favoured him," 
but here also she is a mere decoy to vice, outwitted and 
rejected. 

It is obvious that we are miles away from the 
story of Ophelia and Hamlet with all its romance and 
subtlety. What seems plausible is that the woman in 
the saga was the mere starting-point, and that all the 
rest is the poet's own creation. But here, again, let 
us refer to our standard criterion — the Elizabethan 
audience. Let us remember that the point from which 
we started was the Essex conspiracy and the Essex trial 
with which the subject of the Scottish succession was 
inseparably bound up. 

Would the audience think the story of Ophelia had 
anything to do with the Essex trial ? 



Ophelia 131 

I can only say that I feel pretty sure they would, for 
it shows features which have the most marked resemblances 
to the stories of the two heroines connected with that 
trial : Elizabeth Vernon, the wife of Southampton, and 
Lady Essex. 

If Shakespeare started from this point he would most 
certainly find there the suggestion for his love-story. 

We may quote a letter from Rowland White : 

" My lord of Southampton doth with too much familiarity 
court the fair Mistress Vernon, while his friends, observing 
the Queen's humours towards my Lord of Essex, do what 
they can to bring her to favour him, but in vain." 

Southampton's love for Elizabeth Vernon cost him the 
favour of the queen ; nothing would induce Elizabeth 
to consent to his marriage. From this time (1595) 
onwards Southampton's high spirit was incessantly 
galled; he was kept apart from the woman he loved, 
ordered to absent himself from Court, and continually 
checked in his pubUc career. 

We may quote the following extracts from Rowland 
White's letters January 14th, 1598 : 

" I hear my Lord of Southampton goes with Mr Secretary 
to France, and so onward on his travels, which course of his 
doth extremely grieve his mistress, that passes her time in 
weeping and lamenting." 

And again on February ist : 

" My Lord of Southampton is much troubled by her Majesty's 
strangest usage of him. Somebody hath played unfriendly 
parts with him. Mr Secretary hath procured him license to 



132 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

travel. His fair mistress doth wash her fairest face with 
many tears. / pray God his going away bring her to no such 
infirmity which is as it were hereditary to her name." February 
1 2th, " My Lord of Southamption is gone and hath left behind 
him a fair gentlewoman that hath almost wept out her fairest 
eyes." 

Shortly after Elizabeth Vernon was ordered away 
from Court, Chamberlain writes : 

" Mrs Vernon is from the Court and lies at Essex House. 
Some say she hath taken a venue under her girdle and swells 
upon it ; yet she complains not oi foul play but says My Lord 
of Southampton will justify it, and it is bruited underhand 
that he was lately here four days in great secret of purpose 
to marry her and effected it accordingly." 

The secret marriage seems to have taken place in 1598, 
and the queen, possibly getting to hear of it, was totally 
alienated from Southampton. 

In 1599, Essex went to Ireland ; that Shakespeare 
watched this venture with interest and hoped for 
a successful issue is proved by the open and daring 
reference to it in Henry V. Southampton accompanied 
Essex, and was made his General of Horse, but the queen 
commanded Essex to revoke the appointment. Soath- 
ampton returned to London, and continued to give great 
offence by absenting himself from Court and frequenting 
plays instead. White writes on October 19th : " My 
Lord Southampton and Lord Rutland come not to Court, 
they pass away the time in London merely in going to 
plays every day.*' 

The offence in this lay, of course, in the connection 
the stage was invariably supposed to have with politics. 

Both Essex and Southampton repeatedly offended 



Ophelia 133 

the queen by the connection they had with plays and 
players, just as Hamlet offended the king by his con- 
nection with plays and players ; if Elizabethan dramas 
in general, and Shakespeare's in particular, were always 
dealing with purely imaginary events and characters 
where would be the cause for the annoyance ? 

The candid truth is, all our evidence goes to show that 
the dramatists in general, and Shakespeare quite as much 
as the others, offended as Hamlet did in the Gonzago 
play. 

Southampton, as we have already pointed out, in 
disgrace at the Court, joined in the rash and foolish Essex 
conspiracy. Like Essex, he was condemned to death, 
but the sentence was commuted to perpetual imprison- 
ment ; this was the situation in which he lay at the time 
Hamlet was written, and Southampton's only hope lay 
in the accession of James I. ; as the Essex conspiracy 
was supposed to be in his favour, James might naturally 
be expected to set Southampton free and, as a matter 
of fact, it was one of the first things he did on his progress 
in April 1603. Chamberlain says : 

" the loth of this month the Earl of Southampton was 
delivered out of the Tower, and the King looked upon him 
with a smihng countenance. . . . These bountiful beginnings 
raise all men's spirits and put them in great hopes." 

Now, we can surely see a certain resemblance between 
these events and the love-story of Hamlet and OpheUa. 
There is, to begin with, the wooing with too much 
jamiliarity. 

Polonius and Laertes both complain to Ophelia that 



134 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

she is laying her honour too much open to suspicion. 

Laertes says : 

" weigh what loss your honour may sustain 
If with too credent ear you Hst his songs, 
Or lose your heart, or 3^our chaste treasure open 
To his unmaster'd importunity." ^ 

Polonius adds : 

'Tis told me, he hath very oft of late 

Given private time to you ; and you yourself 

Have of your audience been most free and bounteous . . . 

You do not understand yourself so clearly 

As it behoves my daughter and your honour." 

Elizabeth Vernon, when her honour was called in 

question, justified herself and her lover by declaring 

that he had pledged her his word ; so Ophelia justifies 

herself and Hamlet : 

" He hath importuned me with love 
In honourable fashion . . . 

And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord, 
With almost all the holy vows of heaven." 

Elizabeth Vernon is separated from her lover, and so 
is Ophelia : 

. . . " This is for all : 
I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth 
Have you so slander any moment leisure 
As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet." 

EUzabeth Vernon's love affair was made a court affair 
and a matter of state interference; it was discussed by 
everyone in a way calculated to cause agony to a sensitive 
soul : so is Ophelia's. 

Since marriage was made impossible by this cruel 
interference there was a very strong suspicion that 
1 Act I., iii. 



Ophelia 135 

Elizabeth Vernon had been seduced ; her lover went 
away, and in his absence she was in the deepest distress 
and in danger of insanity. All these things unite to 
make pathetic the story of Ophelia : she is under the 
shadow of disgrace ; Hamlet's language to her in the 
play scene is of the coarsest and most imprudent kind, 
and such as would destroy her reputation in the ears of 
anyone overhearing it ; the songs she herself sings in her 
madness suggest the same thing. Does it not look as 
if Shakespeare were simply carrying a step farther, and 
making a degree more pathetic, the events already 
suggested to him by his friend's story ? At any rate, 
the play is here, also, far and away closer to contemporary 
events that it is to its so-called sources. 

Southampton, certainly the poet's generous patron, 
quite possibly his best-beloved friend, was even then in 
the Tower, his neck in jeopardy on account of the peril 
brought about by this very love-story. He and his 
mistress were regarded as innocent unhappy beings, 
exasperated into disgrace by the needless persecution 
of a true love. 

Could anything be more plausible than that Shake- 
speare would himself be deeply and profoundly moved 
by their fate, and would desire to awaken sympathy 
with them if he could ? And, if to show his sympathy 
also perfects his wonderful drama, why not ? 

Moreover, the unity which he must consider first and 
foremost, is already a unity in the minds of his audience, 
for all these things were bound up in the most intimate 
and vital way with the questions of the Essex conspiracy 
and the Scottish Succession. 



136 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

With regard to the relations between Hamlet and 
Ophelia there can be little doubt, I think, that 
Shakespeare means them to be substantially innocent 
since they are depicted with so much sympathy ; 
but whether they were meant to be innocent in the 
literal sense of the word is quite another question. 
We must not allow ourselves to be misled by Victorian 
prudery. 

The suspicions of Laertes and Polonius might be ex- 
plained to be due to their own foulness of mind ; but 
Hamlet suggests the same thing by his language in the 
play scene, and so does Ophelia in her songs — all these 
things taken together imply a conclusion other than that 
of innocence. 

May it not be an essential part of Hamlet's tragedy 
that he and the woman he loves have genuinely yielded 
to temptation ? 

In this connection I may quote Tieck : 

" How much of fine observation is there in what is said of 
Ophelia in Goethe's ' Wilhelm Meister ' : But, if I do not 
entirely misunderstand Shakespeare, the poet has meant to 
intimate throughout the piece that the poor girl, in the 
ardour of her passion for the fair prince, has yielded all to 
him. The hints and warnings of Laertes come too late. It 
is tender and worthy of the great poet to leave the relation 
of Hamlet and Ophelia, like much else in the piece, a riddle ; 
but it is from this point of view alone that Hamlet's behaviour, 
his bitterness and Ophelia's suffering and madness, find 
connection and consistency." 

" At the acting of the play before the court, Ophelia has 
to endure all sorts of coarseness from Hamlet before all the 
courtiers ; he treats her without that respect which she 
appears to him to have long before forfeited." 



Ophelia 137 

I cannot help adding that our modern habit of senti- 
mental interpretation interferes with Shakespeare's 
tragedy ; if the worst happened to Ophelia it does not 
make her tragedy less, but only more poignant ; it makes 
her as overwhelmingly pathetic as Marguerite in Faust. 

In this connection I may point out that many critics 
have been puzzled by the fact that Hamlet's love for 
Ophelia seems to be obvious only in certain scenes of the 
play and not in others. 

Furnivall goes so far as to think that the Hamlet who 
was at first depicted as the lover of Opheha was very 
different and not as mature as the later Hamlet : 

" I look on it as certain that when Shakespeare began the j 
play he conceived Hamlet as quite a young man. But, as the | 
play grew, as greater weight of reflection, of insight into 
character, of knowledge of life, etc., was wanted, Shakespeare 
necessarily and naturally made Hamlet a formed man ; and 
by the time that he got to the grave-digger's scene, told us 
the prince was thirty — the right age for him, but not his age 
when Laertes and Polonius warned Ophelia against his blood 
that burned in youthful fancy for her — " a toy in the blood." 
The two parts of the play are inconsistent on this main point 
in Hamlet's state." 

Now, this is exactly my own point of view, only I 
think the discrepancy arises from the fact that Shake- 
speare is drawing his Hamlet from more than one original, 
that the character is, in fact, a composite, and that all 
the parts of the composite are not consistent. 

Another point to be noted, is that Hamlet never refers 
to Opheha in his soliloquies ; in these soliloquies he 
shows himself a good deal of a misogynist and his misogyny 
appears to be largely due to his mother's misconduct. 



138 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

but he never refers either to OpheUa's love for him, or 
to his for her ; in fact, he forgets all about her during 
the greater part of the play. This is very curious if he 
really cared for her so deeply. 

Another detail to observe lies in one of the songs sung 
by Ophelia ; it is a lascivious song, and concerns the 
meeting of two lovers as Valentines and their licentious 
union ; Nash wrote for Southampton a lascivious poem 
entitled " The Choosing of Valentines " which deals with 
almost identical circumstances ; it was dedicated to the 
earl in two sonnets, one prefixed and the other suffixed. 



CHAPTER VII 

HAMLET AND ESSEX 

I WILL return now to the point from which I started — 
the Essex trial — for it seems to me obvious that the 
character of Hamlet and the experiences of Hamlet 
include, also, a good deal suggested by Essex. 

Essex, we may remember, had a side of his character 
which was deeply studious and by nature he was a 
student and a soldier far more than a courtier. Francis 
Bacon advised him to appear " bookish and contem- 
plative." ^ In his Apology addressed to Anthony Bacon, 
Essex says : 

" For my infection in nature, it was indifferent to books 
and arms and was more inflamed with the love of know- 
ledge than with the love of fame. . . . Witness your rarely 
qualified brother . . . and my bookishness from my very 
childhood." 

Wotton, in his Reliquice, gives testimony to the same 
effect : 

"It is certain that he (Leicester) drew him (Essex) first 
into the fatal circle from a kind of resolved privateness 
at his house at Lampsie in South Wales when, after the 
academical life, he had taken such a taste for the rural as I 
have heard him say ... he could have well bent his mind 
to a retired course." 

^ Abbot, Bacon and Essex. 



140 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

Now, here we surely see the parallel with Hamlet in 
the studious nature which loves retirement, and wishes 
to avoid the court and to live in seclusion after the 
university course. 

" Essex," says Mr Abbott, "sorely needed guidance, and, 
unlike many of the guideless, he knew that he needed it. 
Like Hamlet he was and knew that he was too liable to be 
* passion's slave ' and he longed for some calm, steadfast 
and philosophic Horatio. . . . Physically and mentally Essex 
was as unstable as Hamlet ... at one time outshining 
all his peers in the glory of the tilt-yard, at the next, sulking 
in solitude at Wanstead ; now the Queen's chief councillor 
and sole depositary of all state secrets, now again forswearing 
all work, neglecting all his own interests and even those of 
his friends ; at one moment exulting ... at another ex- 
claiming ' Vanitas vanitatum ' and despairing even of honour 
and safety. . . . His instabihty more often injured himself 
than his friends." 

Just as Essex had come reluctantly to Court from 
his studies, so he often desired to retire from it, and at 
times did so. In a letter to Lady Anne Bacon, the 
Earl complains : '* I live in a place where I am hourly 
compassed against and practised upon." 

Anthony Bacon accuses Cecil of tampering with his 
correspondence, and Essex feels ill at ease amid all this 
intrigue, and once more resorts to his old expedient of 
absenting himself from Court. 

" Essex," says Mr Abbott, '' was during the last years 
of his life, continually suffering from melancholy." 

Essex, also, seemed at times on the verge of insanity. 
" The Earl is crazed," writes Chamberlain, " but whether 
more in mind or body, is doubtful." 



Hamlet and Essex 141 

At his trial Essex was accused by Robert Cecil of 
ambition, and of aspiring to the Crown : 

" I have said the King of Scots was a competitor ; and 
you I have said are a Competitor ; you would depose the 
Queen, you would be King of England, and call a Parliament." 

Essex, in his reply, dwelt on his lack of ambition : 

" I have laboured and by my prayers to God earnestly 
desired that I might be armed with patience to endure all 
afflictions. . . . God which knoweth the secrets of all hearts 
knows that I never sought the Crown of England, nor ever 
wished to be a higher degree than that of subject." 

Now, I have already pointed out, that in the original 
saga, one of Hamlet's chief motives was his desire to gain 
the crown for himself ; in Shakespeare's play this is 
entirely omitted, and the hero is characterised by a 
complete lack of ambition, very curious in his situation, 
but explicable enough if Shakespeare is taking hints 
from somebody against whom ambition had been made 
a criminal charge. 

Speaking of the last two years of Essex's life, Mr Abbott 
says : 

" There can be no question at all that, rightly or wrongly, 
Essex believed that his enemies around the Queen's person 
were plotting the betrayal of his country as well as the ruin 
of himself and also that in his moods of depression and melan- 
choly, he thought his life to be in immediate danger." 

" He was at this time given to fits of gloom and despair." 

Harrington says of him in such a mood *' the man's 
soul tosseth to and fro like a troubled sea." 

" His irresolution," says Mr Abbott again, " bordered 
on the fitfulness of insanity." 



142 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

Now here, once more, we surely have remarkable 
parallels to Hamlet : in the last part of the play we have 
Hamlet's feeling that his enemies are plotting his death, 
and will certainly achieve it : we have his premonition, 
*' But thou wouldst not think, how ill all's here about my 
heart." i 

The mind " tossing like a troubled sea," reminds us 
of Hamlet's own metaphor " to take arms against a sea 
of troubles, And by opposing end them." 2 

Essex, in fact, in the last year of his life, was, as Mr 
Abbott so justly points out, startlingly Uke Hamlet : 
he was irresolute almost to the point of insanity, he was 
surrounded by cunning enemies who plotted against his 
life, he had a premonition of disaster. 

Essex, moreover, suffered from a misery so great that 
he often longed for death. Thus he said at his trial : 

" I will not (I protest to God) speak to save my life ; for 
those that persecute it against me, shall do me a good turn 
to rid me of much misery and themselves of fear." 

We may compare this with Hamlet.^ 

" To die : to sleep ; 
No more ; and by a sleep to say we end 
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks 
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation 
Devoutly to be wished." 

Essex, on being condemned, said, as he had often done 
during his trial : '* My own life I do not value," but he 
besought mercy for the Earl of Southampton. 

lActV., ii. 3 Act III., i. » Act III., i. 



Hamlet and Essex 143 

We may compare Hamlet, " I do not set my life at a 
pin's fee," ^ 

Again Essex said, " I protest I do crave her Majesty's 
mercy with all humility ; yet I had rather die than live 
in misery." 

We have Hamlet's ^ : 

" For who would bear the whips and scorns of time 
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, . . . 
When he himself might his quietus make 
With a bare bodkin." 

Essex, on hearing his sentence, said : " My Lord, I 
am not at all dismayed to receive this sentence, for death 
is far more cheerful to me than life ; and I shall die as 
cheerful a death as ever man did." 

Essex, in fact, showed emphatically during the last 
period of his life, the world-weariness and the life- weariness 
which we associate so markedly with Hamlet. 

John Chamberlain, writing February 21st, 1600- 1, 
says : 

" The Earl of Essex announced that he was driven to do 
what he did for safety of his life. . , . This was the summe 
of his answer, but delivered with such bravery and so many 
words that a man might easily perceive that, as he had ever 
lived popularly, so his chief care was to have a good opinion 
in the people's minds now at parting." 

We may compare this with Hamlet's intense anxiety 
not to leave after him ** a wounded name," and his in- 
junction to Horatio to " tell my story." ^ 

1 Act I., Iv. » Act III., i. - Act v., ii. 



144 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

Malone pointed out long ago that Shakespeare in 
writing the last words of Horatio's farewell : 

" Now cracks a noble heart — Good night, sweet prince, 
And flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest," 

had in his mind the last words of Essex in his prayer 
on the scaffold: "And when my soul and body shall 
part, send thy blessed angels to he near unto me which may 
convey it to the joys of heaven.'' We may also note that 
shortly after the execution there was a ballad published, 
entitled Essex' Last Good-night. It is a rough and doggerel 
production and every verse ends with the refrain of 
''goodnight." 

" He never yet hurt Mother's son, 
His quarrel still maintains the right, 
Which the tears my face down run 
\\Tien I think on his last Good-Night." 

" And life shall make amends for all 
For Essex bids the world 'Good-Night.' " 

It looks as if Shakespeare were remembering and 
reminding his audience of both. 

The whole part of Hamlet which is concerned with the 
players seems to me to have, in all probability, a great 
deal to do with Essex. 

Both Essex and Southampton gave repeated offence 
to the queen by the way in which they associated them- 
selves with actors and stage plays. 

Mr Ingram says : 

" At that time the Stage, to a great extent, possessed the 
influence which in a later age passed to the Press. Having 
no daily journals or other accessible means of rapid and general 



Hamlet and Essex 145 

communication on topics of common interest, the public 
looked to and found what it wanted in the Stage. The play 
supphed references to the political, religious and social events 
of the day. Writers and players found their profit in respond- 
ing to the popular feeling of their audience, and although 
many times fine and imprisonment rewarded their attempt 
to meddle with matters of state, they persisted in their 
efforts." 1 

Now it has already been pointed out that Shake- 
speare's company had the closest possible connection 
with the Essex trial through their repeated performance 
of Richard II., and that his connection with the play 
told heavily against Essex at the trial itself since the 
deposition scene and the death were taken as being an 
earnest of what he intended to do with the queen. 

The reader will also remember that one of the chief 
counts in the indictment against Essex was his patronage 
of Haywarde's book on Henry IV., which was supposed 
to contain numerous references to Elizabeth's favouritism 
and other objectionable features of her reign. 

Now surely we can see here many parallels with 
Hamlet. We see Hamlet treating the players with the 
utmost courtesy, on terms of familiarity with them, 
interested in their art, giving them instructions and 
consulting with them as to the plays they are to perform ; 
his connection with them is regarded \vith great suspicion 
by Polonius and the king (exactly as the queen objected 
to Essex an Scuthampton having a connection with 
the players), and with justice, for Hamlet does use them 
for political purposes exactly as Essex had used them for 
political purposes. 

1 Christopher Marlowe and his Associates. 
K 



146 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

Hamlet's method of dealing with the Gonzago play is 
exactly the method which Shakespeare had been accused 
of employing both in Henry IV. and Richard II. It 
seems to me, as I have said before, exceedingly prob- 
able that it was the method he used in dealing with 
Hamlet. He selects a story which shows a considerable 
likeness to the murder of his father, he accentuates that 
likeness, and makes it more pointed, and then, when the 
king is naturally full of indignation, he leaps to his feet and 
cries that "the story is extant," and "in choice Italian." 
This is probably the exact method by which Shakespeare 
and his fellows evaded the censor. 

Hamlet himself describes the players, as " the abstract 
and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you 
were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while 
you live." 1 Now, in what sense could they be "the abs- 
tract and brief chronicles of the time," if their plays 
dealt with bronze-age Britain, with ancient Denmark 
and remote Illyria, and with nothing else. 

Moreover, if this were the case, why should the Star 
Chamber concern itself so closely with both dramatists 
and actors. The truth is that we have overwhelm- 
ing evidence for the political influence of the stage, 
and Shakespeare and Shakespeare's company were as 
deeply involved as anyone. 

In the case of Hamlet his meddling with the Gonzago 
play is the thing that excites the suspicion of the king, 
which never afterwards slumbered ; he places his neck 
in jeopardy, and ultimately brings his fate upon him 
through this play. In exactly the same way did Essex 
1 Act II., ii. 



Hamlet and Essex 147 

place his neck in jeopardy, and help to bring suspicion 
upon himself (as his trial shows) by his connection with 
Richard II. 

All this part of Hamlet is quite obviously full of topical 
allusions, for Shakespeare even makes a reference to the 
boys, the '* little eyases " who supplanted himself and 
his company in the favour of the court when they were 
disgraced on account of this very affair. 

There can be little doubt that Shakespeare brings his 
own company in here. Hamlet asks : " What players 
are they ? " 

Ros. Even those you were wont to take delight in, the 
tragedians of the city. 

Ham. How chances it they travel ? their residence, both 
in reputation and profit, was better both ways, 

Ros. I think their inhibition comes by the means of the 
late innovation. 

Ham. Do they hold the same estimation they did when I 
was in the city ? are they so followed ? 

Ros. No, indeed, they are not. 

Ham. How comes it ? do they grow rusty ? 

Ros. Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace ; 
but tliere is, sir, an aery of children, little eyases, that cry 
out on the top of question and are most tyrannically clapped 
for't." 

Now, this is one of the passages quite definitely accepted 
by Mr Boas and others as referring to Shakespeare's 
own company, and one of the passages they mainly rely 
upon in estimating the date of the play. But, if Shake- 
speare inserts his company like this into the very middle 
of Hamlet, what is there to prevent him from inserting 
also the method of himself and his company into the 
midst of Hamlet, and explaining it in the Gonzago play ? 



148 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

Can we, as a matter of fact, imagine a better method of 
doing it, and of suggesting that Hamlet is full of historical 
parallels even though the story is extant already as a 
play. 

Another portion of Hamlet which seems to me to 
contain, in all probability, reference to Essex, is the 
Laertes story. There is certainly no parallel whatever 
to this in the original saga, but there is in the last years 
of the Hfe of Essex. 

Laertes is cunningly used by Claudius as a rival to 
Hamlet; he tries to destroy them by pitting them one 
against the other. 

It was in exactly the same way that Raleigh had been 
pitted against Essex. Mr Innes ^ says : 

" Old Lord Burleigh died, and a considerable portion of 
the story of the Queen's last years is really the story of the 
crafty intriguing by which Robert Cecil first urged Essex to 
the ruin on which he was ready enough to rush, and then laid 
his mines for the destruction of Raleigh while carefully 
avoiding the odium in both cases." 

Essex repeatedly stated at the time of his abortive 
attempt, and also during his trial, that he believed 
his life in danger, and that Raleigh and others had been 
appointed to assassinate him. 

Anthony Weldon states that the destruction of Essex 
was always counted against Robert Cecil : 

" Sir Robert Cecil was a very wise man, but much hated 
in England by reason of the fresh bleeding of that unusually 
beloved Earl of Essex." 

1 "Walter Raleigh" (in Ten Tudor Statesmen). 



Hamlet and Essex 149 

At the Essex trial Masham deposed, February loth, 
1601 : 

" I heard that Lord Essex should have been murdered, 
and was come guarded into London for safety. ... I met a 
servant of Lady Essex who told me that Cobham and Raleigh 
would have murdered my lord that night. . . . My lord 
came forth himself and declared to the people that he should 
have been murdered and came to them for safety. ..." 

So, in Hamlet, Claudius tries to employ Laertes to get 
rid of Hamlet in order to avoid the odium himself ; the 
method to be employed is that of an " envenomed foil " ; 
now, venom is, of course, an ever-recurring metaphor 
for slander, and stabbing was the exact method of death 
expected by Essex himself. 

On March 3rd, 1601, the deposition of Masham was 
confirmed by that of Dr Fletcher : Mr Temple said that 
the Earl was waylaid by Sir Walter Raleigh and his 
company of ruffians, and that if he went {i.e. to court), 
he should certainly be martyred. That he (Temple) 
acquainted me and others of my Lord's friends with it, 
that they might know how he was pursued by his enemies, 
meaning Sir Walter Raleigh and his company. 

We may remember in this connection that Raleigh 
was present at the death of Essex, but, for fear lest 
he might be accused of triumphing over him he with- 
drew to some distance, and saw it from the armoury 
only. 

Raleigh is said to have shed tears of compassion. 
During all the remainder of his life he was concerned 
to excuse himself from complicity. 

Even at his death (1618), it was the charge against 



150 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

him that he thought most grievous ; on the scaffold 
Raleigh entreated everyone to believe 

" that he had not been instrumental in causing the death of 
the Earl of Essex nor had he rejoiced thereat, as had been 
imported to him. On the contrary he had regretted it more 
than his own sins." 

Here, again, it is impossible not to see the parallel 
with Hamlet. 

Hamlet was written when it was still believed that 
Raleigh had been instrumental in the destruction of 
Essex ; but it was also believed that his deed was scarcely 
consummated before he had felt remorse. This is the 
exact situation of Laertes, who realises too late how he 
has been practised upon : 

" Hamlet ; Hamlet, thou art slain ; 
No medicine in the world can do thee good : 
In thee there is not half an hour of life, 
The treacherous instrument is in thy hand, 
Unbated and envenomed." 

Sir Anthony Weldon states that it was resentment 
for the death of Essex which caused James, on his 
accession, to be so hard on Raleigh. 

It is probable also that the grave-digging scene owes 
something to the execution of Essex. It certainly owes 
nothing to the original saga ; in the saga Amleth returns 
from Britain to Jutland, and finds the court celebrating 
his own funeral : 

" Covered with filth, he entered the banquet room where 
obsequies were being held and struck all men utterly aghast, 
rumour having falsely noised about his death. 



Hamlet and Essex 151 

Before the court can recover from its astonishment 
Amleth gets the better of them all, and burns them to 
death in the banqueting hall. This is also the situation in 
the Historie of Hamblet. 

It seems possible that this feigned funeral of Hamlet 
may have suggested the real funeral of Ophelia; but 
the conception of the grave-diggers owes much more 
to contemporary events. Essex was so generally be- 
loved that the ordinary executioner refused his task; a 
stranger had to be found to behead the Earl, and the 
man bungled his task and performed it horribly ; the 
anger of the populace against him was so great that he 
dared not appear in the streets of London for fear of 
being lynched. 

Edmond Howes's continuation of Stow's Chronicle sta.ies ; 

"The 25 of February, being Ash-wednesday, about 8. of 
the clocke in the morning was the sentence of death executed 
upon Robert Devereux earle of Essex, within the Tower of 
London. . . . The hangman was beaten as hee returned 
thence, so that the sheriffes of London were called to assist 
and rescue him from such as would have murthered him." 

Now in Hamlet the chief point of the grave-digging 
scene is the way in which the ** knave " insults the remains 
of the dead, and the immense helplessness of the dead 
before these insults. The '' knave " cares nothing for 
the skulls, " he jowls " one to the ground as "if it were 
Cain's jawbone that did the first murder." He knocks 
another about the mazzard with his spade. It has been 
usual to explain the incident of Yori :k's skull as referring 
to the recent death of Tarleton, the great comedian of 
Shakespeare's company : it may be so ; but it is much 



152 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

more probable that the mcident refers to Essex ; Tarleton 
was certainly not executed, and no one has ever told us 
that his dead body was insulted, whereas Yorick's skull 
must be severed from his body, since Hamlet takes it 
in his hands. Moreover, Yorick's skull is certainly in- 
sulted ; as acted on the stage the clown usually strikes 
it as he strikes the others. Yorick is described as the 
" king's jester," " a fellow of infinite jest," " of most 
excellent fancy " ; and Essex had been one of the most 
brilhant and the wittiest of all the courtiers. 

Take, moreover, the language in which Hamlet 
addresses the skull when he says : " Get you to my lady's 
chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this 
favour she must come ; make her laugh at that." 

This surely has no suggestion of Tarleton ; but it is 
most gruesome and terrible if it apphes to Essex ; it 
reminds us of the famous incident when, on his return 
from Ireland, Essex rushed into the presence of his 
queen, and found her at her toilet — probably dishevelled 
and painting, an incident which was supposed to have 
had a most untoward effect upon his fate. An imagina- 
tion worthy of Dante to make the skull of the victim 
interrupt once again at the toilette ! 

Here, also, we probably find the reason for comparing 
the skull to that of Alexander's. Where would be the 
point of comparing Tarleton's skull to Alexander's, or 
his dust to that of " imperious Caesar " ; but there is 
real point in comparing that of Essex, for Essex had been 
one of the most daring and brilliant soldiers of his day. 
The exploit of Essex against Cadiz was a most brilliant 
feat of arms in which, like Alexander, he had ventured 



Hamlet and Essex 153 

almost single-handed, into a hostile city ; like Alexander, 
Essex had travelled widely, and met his enemies in distant 
lands and, like him, he too perished in his youth. Rash- 
ness was the quality of both, rashness and brilliance 
and an early death. Hamlet compares Yorick's skull 
to Alexander's : " Dost thou think Alexander looked o' 
this fashion i' the earth?" and again, "Why may not 
imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he 
find it stopping a bung-hole." 

"Essex," says Mr Abbott, "was acknowledged, though on 
insufficient grounds no doubt, to be the ablest general in 
England ; it was precisely because he was acknowledged to 
be the ablest general that he was sent to Ireland." 

We may compare, also, the contemporary pamphlet, 
Honour in Perfection, by G. M., usually attributed to 
Gervase Marklam, which deals with the house of Essex : 

" The noble world is but a Theatre of Renoune, the Tongues 
of all people make up but the Trumpet which speaks them, 
and it is Eternitie itself which shall keep them unto ever- 
lasting memorie," 

Moreover, Essex himself had been haunted by the 
dread of ignominy to his body if he died the death of 
a traitor, and had repeatedly spoken of it ; even before 
he came into open revolt he had been conscious of 
exposure to low-minded insults. 

I quote the most pertinent extracts ; thus, in a letter 
written to the queen dated May 20th, 1600, Essex says 
of himself that he feels 

" as if I were thrown into a corner like a dead carcass, I am 
gnawed upon and torn by the basest and vilest creatures 



154 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

upon earth. The tavern-haunter speaks of me what he lists. 
Already they print me and make me speak to the world, and 
shortly they will print me in what forms they list upon the 
stage." ^ 

Now, surely we have here remarkable parallels to 
the grave-digging scene ; Yorick's skull is thrown into 
a corner, it is " gnawed upon " by the vilest of creatures ; 
the clown is a tavern-haunter, for he sends his boy for 
a " stoup of liquor " even over his work, thus bringing the 
dead insulted bodies into the closest connection with 
the tavern. 

Moreover, as we see, Essex was confident that he would 
be represented on the stage and, if so, why might not 
Shakespeare represent him and defend him ? 

Shakespeare might have seen this very letter before 
it was sent ; there is no reason why he should not. 

On receiving sentence, Essex said : 

" And I think it fitting that my poor quarters, which have 
done her Majesty true service in divers parts of the world, 
should now at last be sacrificed and disposed of at her Majesty's 
pleasure." 

Compare this with Hamlet's bitter irony : 

" Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, 
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away." ^ 

We may compare the declaration of the treasons 
uttered by a certain Abraham Colfe referring to Essex ^ : 

" He commended a great general of the wars lately dead 
whom he called Veri Dux, extolling most highly his infancy, 
young years, and man's age, his embracing of learned men 

^ Birch, Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth. 

* Act v., i. 2 siate Papers, 1601. 



Hamlet and Essex 155 

and warriors, who all followed him without pay. He named 
the journey to Cadiz, his forwardness there and felicity, and 
how men looked on his returning " tanquam in solem oc- 
cidentum." . . . After his coming home he was " pessime 
tractatus, quia cum esset imperator imperata non fecerit, " . . . 
His virtue which drew upon him the envy of great personages 
was the cause of his overthrow. 

"... His enemies accused him of aspiring to a kingdom. . . . 
He showed how the executioners had three strokes at his 
head, that his very enemies could not choose but weep when 
they saw his head cut off. . . . His conclusion was. "You 
have heard of the life and death of a worthy general." 

Surely, we have here the same train of thought as in 
Shakespeare ; the insulted dead, the shamed and humili- 
ated dust and the " great general," so great that he is 
compared to an emperor and the leader of his country. 
History does not record that the dust of Alexander 
" stopped a bung-hole," or that the dust of Ceesar 
" patched a hole to expel the winter's flaw " ; but pro- 
found humiUation certainly happened to the dust of 
Essex. 

Remember that the execution of Essex was still the 
grief of the whole country when Hamlet was played, and 
let us ask ourselves what Shakespeare's audience would 
be likely to think. 

Another point to notice is that, before his death, Essex 
most passionately desired reconciliation with those whom 
he had esteemed his enemies. He professed to bear no 
malice to Lord Cobham and Sir Walter Raleigh and, as 
already quoted,^ the latter is said to have shed tears when 
he witnessed the execution of Essex. 

^ Birch, Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth. 



156 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

We may compare the reconciliation of Hamlet and 
Laertes. 

" Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet ; 
Mine and my father's death come not upon thee, 
Nor thine on me," 

and Hamlet's reply : 

" Heaven make thee free of it." ^ 

Laertes is stabbed by the " envenomed foil " prepared 
for Hamlet, and, as he himself says : 

" I am justly kill'd with mine own treachery." 

So was Raleigh destroyed by the same methods of slander 
which he had himself employed against Essex. 

I turn now to an incident which has always puzzled 
commentators : the fight between Hamlet and Laertes 
in the grave. 

Campbell points out that Hamlet's love for Ophelia 
only seems to occur in certain portions of the play and 
that, for instance, the burial scene seems to show an 
almost complete absence of it : 

" Had it been in the mind of Shakespeare to show Hamlet in 
the agony of hopeless despair he must at that moment have 
been, had Ophelia been all in all to hhn ... is there in all 
his writings so utter a failure in the attempt to give vent to 
an overwhelming passion ? ... It seems not a little un- 
accountable that Hamlet should have been so slightly affected 
by her death." 

Campbell points out that Hamlet's real motive in 
leaping into the grave appears to be, not love for Ophelia 
1 Act v., ii. 



Hamlet and Essex 157 

at all, but rivalry with Laertes — a very different passion. 
Campbell continues : 

" When Hamlet leaps into the grave do we see in that 
any power of love ? I am sorry to confess that to me the 
whole of that scene is merely painful. It is anger with 
Laertes, not love for OpheHa, that makes Hamlet leap into 
the grave. Laertes' conduct, he tells us afterwards, put hun 
into a towering passion — a state of mind which it is not easy 
to reconcile with any kind of sorrow for the dead Ophelia. 
But had he been attempting to describe the behaviour of an 
impassioned lover at the grave of his beloved I should be 
compelled to feel that he had not merely departed from 
nature, but that he had offered her the most profane violation 
and insult." 

It seems to me that this fight in the grave may perhaps 
be best interpreted as symbolic. The whole Elizabethan 
age was passing away ; its glories were decaying and 
most of its great men were already dead ; of those who 
remained, the most distinguished — Essex and Raleigh — 
were flying at each other's throats, eager to destroy each 
other ; their queen was the shadow of herself, anyone 
knew she might die at any moment, and it was precisely 
over the question of her succession that the most violent 
quarrels broke out. The clown when first asked for 
whom the grave was made replies that it is for no man or 
no woman neither, and a little later on explains : " One 
that was a woman, sir, but, rest her soul, she's dead." 
It may be meant to symbolise the burial of a whole age. 
Hamlet and Laertes both profess that their motive for 
the quarrel in the grave is their love for Ophelia, and 
they '' outface " each other in their professions of affection 
to her, the result being this disgraceful insult to her 



158 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

memory. Surely if it is meant as a symbol it is terribly 
appropriate, the last great Elizabethans destroying each 
other over the very body of their mistress, all the time 
professing their love, and a crafty enemy taking advan- 
tage of their quarrel to destroy them both. I can see no 
reason why Shakespeare should not introduce, at least, an 
element of symbolism into his plays ; the greatest of his 
predecessors — Spenser — wrote a poem which is one mass 
of symbolism ; symbolism was one of the chief methods 
in the religious drama which preceded Shakespeare's, 
and in one of his chief dramatic predecessors — Lyly. 

Another scene which may possibly have been suggested 
by the Essex story is the casket scene between Hamlet 
and Ophelia when Ophelia returns the casket of his 
letters, declaring that they were love letters, and Hamlet 
is immediately enraged, and suspects her honesty. 

We learn from the State Papers} that the Countess of 
Essex had been used as an instrument to betray her 
husband. In June 1601, there was a long examination 
in the Star Chamber concerning a casket of letters which 
the Countess of Essex had entrusted to a certain Jane 
Daniells who had also been her gentlewoman. 

" Jane's husband stole a number of the letters to have 
them copied. , . . 

" The countess was greatly afraid that the Earl would be 
angry with her for suffering his long and passionate love-letters 
to be spread abroad . . . she swore they were not dangerous. 
. . . Daniells demanded three thousand pounds to give them 
back and the Countess was forced to sell her jewels. . . . 

" At the time of the Earl's arraignment he pretended that 

1 Ed. Green. 



Hamlet and Essex 159 

the aforementioned letters had been stolen and counterfeited 
by his adversaries. . . . 

" The Court, pitying the Countess, . . , cleared her from all 
suspicion of any ill intention towards her late husband." 

Here, again, wc surely have close parallels. Hamlet's 
love-letters to Ophelia are intercepted and stolen; 
Hamlet asserts that he never gave her anything, while 
she asserts that he did, but that the gifts were love-letters 
and jewels; moreover, this very casket scene is used 
as a means to decoy Hamlet into the hands of his enemies, 
and Ophelia is the innocent and unwilling instrument, 
overwhelmed with distress by Hamlet's anger. 

The parallel is, once again, suspiciously close, and this 
also is a scene which has no parallel whatever in the 
so-called literary source. 

We may observe that OpheUa's description of her 
lover stands out sharply from the Hamlet of much of 
the play, the Hamlet who resembles James I., though 
OpheUa's description of her lover would serve admir- 
ably for the Earl of Essex. She expressly tells us that 
the Hamlet she had loved was both a " courtier " and 
" a soldier." 

" O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown ! 
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword : 
The expectancy and rose of the fair state. 
The glass of fashion and the mould of form, 
The observed of all observers, quite, quite, down ! " 

When was the Hamlet of the rest of the play a soldier ? 
Does he not expressly dislike bloodshed ? 

How can he have been a courtier when he so ex- 



i6o Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

pressly despises all the tricks of courtiers ? How can 
he have been the " glass of fashion," and the " mould 
of form," when he thoroughly despised dress and 
habiliments ? 

How can he have been the " observed of all ob- 
servers ? " when he shrank from notice, and desired 
the privacy of study ? How can he have been " un- 
matched in form and feature ' ' when, according to his 
own mother, he was " fat and scant of breath." 
Ophelia's lover is so different from the Hamlet of 
most of the play as to suggest that he really was a 
different person, which is confirmed by the fact that 
this Hamlet forgets all about her, and never even refers 
to her in his soliloquies. 

Mr Bradley gives an admirable summary of this curious 
indifference from which I quote a portion : 

(i) How is it that, in his first soliloquy, Hamlet makes 
no reference whatever to Ophelia ? 

(2) How is it that, in his second soliloquy, on the 
departure of the ghost, he again says nothing about her ? 

(5) In what way are Hamlet's insults to Ophelia at 
the play scene necessary either to his purpose of con- 
vincing her of his insanity or to his purpose of revenge ? 

(6) How is it that neither when he kills Polonius, 
nor afterwards, does he reflect that he has killed 
OpheHa's father, or what the effect on Opheha is likely 
to be? 

(7) . . . there is no reference to Ophelia in the solilo- 
quies of the first act, nor in those of any of the other 
acts. 



Hamlet and Essex i6i 

(8) In speaking to Horatio, Hamlet never mentions 
Ophelia, and at his death he says nothing of her. 



It seems to me that these facts are practically impossible 
to explain if Hamlet is to be interpreted as psychology ; 
but if it is to be interpreted as mainly historical they 
are simple enough. We may compare with Ophelia's 
description of her lover, the description of Essex appended 
to the account of his trial in 1649 : 

" There sleeps great Essex, darling of Mankind, 
Fair Honour's lamp, foul envie's prey, Art's fame. 
Nature's pride, Virtue's bulwark, lure of Mind, 
Wisdom's flower, Valour's tower, Fortune's Shame, 
England's Sun, Belgia's light, France's star, Spain's thunder 
Lisbon's lightning, Ireland's cloud, the whole world's 
wonder." 

Here we have all the characteristics of Ophelia's lover : 
we have the courtier, the soldier and the scholar, the 
model for the whole world, and the flower of beauty 
as well. 

There still remains for remark one portion of the death- 
scene of Hamlet ; that concerning the arrival of Fortin- 
bras as heir to the kingdom, accompanied by his army. 
There is nothing whatever to explain this either in Saxo 
Grammaticus or in the Hystorie of Hamblet ; there could 
not be, as in both these accounts Hamlet himself takes 
the crown. Neither is there anything whatever in 
Shakespeare's Hamlet which explains why Fortinbras 
should be the heir. At the beginning of the play we 
are told by Horatio that Fortinbras lays claim to " certain 

L 



l62 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

lands" which his father had lost to the elder Hamlet, 
and was, therefore, threatening Denmark with war,^ but 
Horatio never suggests that Fortinbras is, in any sense 
whatever, the heir of Denmark. Why should he be? 
He belongs to Norway, and not a hint is given us as to 
any legal or dynastic claim he may have on Denmark. 
Yet, in the last scene, Hamlet acknowledges him as his 
true successor. 

Surely all this is very strange. The clue seems to me 
to be found once again in historical events. 

It seems to have been an essential part of the Essex 
plot that James should be ready to support his claim 
to the succession by force of arms. 

Mr John Bruce says 2 : 

" It seems clear that Essex had been in correspondence 
with James ever since 1598. . . . Montjoy in the depth of 
his solicitude, . . . sent his Scottish Majesty a ' project,' 
the effect of which was that James should prepare an army, 
should march at the head of it to the borders and there ful- 
minate a demand to the English government of an open 
declaration to the right of the succession, should support the 
demand by sending an ambassador into England, and of 
course, although not so stated, if his demand were refused, 
should cross the borders as an invader. ..." 

James was greatly grieved by the fate of Essex, and 
termed him his martyr. As early as November 1599, 
when under the influence of Essex, James procured to 
be suggested to his principal nobility of Scotland, that 
they should enter into a league or " Band " for the pre- 
servation of his person and the pursuit of his right to 

^ Act I., i. 2 Introduction to James's Letters. 



Hamlet and Essex 163 

the crowns of England and Ireland. Such an engagement 
was willingly entered into. . . . 

He also solicited from his parliament ... a liberal 
grant for warlike purposes in reference to the succession. 
"He was not certain," he told them, "how soon he 
should have to use arms ; but whenever it should be, he 
knew his right and would venture crown and all for 
it. . . . The ' Band ' of the nobles was sufficiently well- 
known in England." 

I have already quoted Malone to the effect that the 

last words of Horatio over Hamlet are the dying words 

of Essex. Let us refer to the last words of Hamlet 

himself : 

" I cannot live to hear the news from England ; 
But I do prophesy the election lights 
On Fortinbras : he has my dying voice ; 
So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less. 
Which have solicited. The rest is silence." 

Surely it would be hardly possible to dramatise the 
situation more closely ? We have the heir who belongs 
to another kingdom altogether —a more northern one— 
who is entering to make good his right at the head of his 
army. We must remember that, when Hamlet was 
written, it was still thought that such an armed in- 
tervention might be necessary. Hamlet cannot live, as 
Essex could not live, to " hear the news from England " ; 
but he prophesies that the "election" will light on 
Fortinbras and, in any case, he gives his " dying voice " 
for him. Fortinbras commands that Hamlet's body 
shall be placed " on a stage," a curious detail in itself, 
and one that suggests the " stage " of execution. 



164 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

Also, Fortinbras commands that full honours shall 
be paid to the body of Hamlet; and as a matter of 
fact, James did acknowledge his debt to Essex, for he 
restored his family to title and honours and set free his 
followers. 



CHAPTER VIII 

CONCLUSION 

And now, what is our main conclusion to be ? It seems 
to me absolutely certain that the historical analogues 
exist ; that they are important, numerous, detailed and 
undeniable. There are, however, three possible ex- 
planations as to how they get in the play : 
(i) We may say that they belong to the " atmo- 
sphere " of the time and get in unconsciously. 
Shakespeare sees these things around him, and 
without knowing it, incorporates them in his 
drama. 

(2) Shakespeare is writing a literary drama in which 

he incorporates a certain amount of contem- 
porary history deliberately and of set purpose. 

(3) Shakespeare is writing what is practically a piece 

of mythology ; it consists mainly of contem- 
porary history only fitted in to a dramatic 
frame. 
Now, it appears to me that (i) may be rejected ab- 
solutely : the historical resemblances are so important 
on the one hand, so numerous, detailed and close on the 
other, that it does not seem to me they can have got in 
by any form of accident ; when we reflect, moreover, 
that they were all events of immediate interest the sup- 
position is practically impossible 

165 



1 66 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

To me the only choice lies between (2) and (3). I 
leave it to each reader to decide as to which alternative 
seems the more likely. 

One thing seems, at any rate, absolutely certain, that 
Shakespeare is using a large element of contemporary 
history in Hamlet. 

It appears to me that in the total construction of the 
play, the literary source is comparatively unimportant, 
and the historical source exceedingly important. 

All the things that give us the essence of the Shake- 
spearean drama are really historical ; the secret murder, 
the use of poison, the voice of accusation heard in the 
night, the graphic representation reproducing the murder, 
the crucial character of Hamlet himself with his hesitancy 
and his reluctance to punish — the centre of the whole 
— the character of Claudius and his attitude towards 
Hamlet, the murder of Polonius, the character of Polonius, 
Hamlet's relation to the Players, the treatment of the 
Play which brings Hamlet's own neck into jeopardy, 
the love-story of Ophelia, the casket motive, the madness 
motive, the rivalry between Hamlet and Laertes, the 
way in which they are pitted against each other so that 
both may be destroyed, the grave-digger's scene, the fight 
in the grave, the entrance of Fortinbras — for all these 
no analogues can be found in the saga source (either 
Saxo or Belief orest), and very minute and close analogues 
can be found in the contemporary history of most 
immediate interest. 

The Essex conspiracy and the Scottish succession 
were the questions of burning interest at the time, any 
audience would be certain to feel their appeal and 



Conclusion 167 

Shakespeare himself, as I have shown, had a double reason 
for a strong personal interest. 

These events involved the fate of his dramatic company 
which was compromised by its connection with the 
Essex conspiracy and involved the fate of the man who 
was certainly his patron and possibly his dearest friend 
— Southampton — and who was even then in danger of 
death. Shakespeare desired to write about these 
subjects, and he did write about them, only he called 
them something else. 

We have good reasons for believing that this method 
was fairly often followed. 

(i) The authorities continually suspected the players 
of introducing political motives into their plays. 

(2) Dr Haywarde was accused of having turned 
Henry IV. into a contemporary parallel. 

(3) Shakespeare's company were accused of having 
done the same thing in Richard 11. ; Shakespeare's own 
play. 

(4) Shakespeare himself has shown us in Hamlet's 
treatment of the Gonzago play both how it could be 
done, and how dangerous it was to do it. 

It seems to me that Shakespeare selected the Amleth 
saga in almost precisely the spirit in which Hamlet 
selected the Gonzago story. The Amleth story was 
sufficiently well-known to be excellent as a disguise, it 
was sufficiently remote to place no restrictions upon his 
handling, he was free to modify it as much as he chose, 
and he did modify it till there was hardly any of the 
original left. 

It is not, I think, in the least difficult to see how 



i68 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

Shakespeare would naturally arrive at such a method 
of construction. 

We cannot, I think, postulate with certainty many 
things concerning him, but there are two we do certainly 
know : one is that he was a man intensely interested 
in human nature as such, from the statecraft of kings 
and princes down to the ways of ostlers baiting their 
horses at an inn ; the second is that, as shown by such 
passages as the speech of Henry V. before Agincourt and 
the dying speech of John of Gaunt in Richard 11. , Shake- 
speare must have been an intensely patriotic Englishman. 

Such a man would naturally commence his career 
by attempting to dramatise history, a course which would 
gratify at once his love of reality and his patriotism. 
This is exactly what Shakespeare did in the long series 
of the historical dramas. 

However, in the course of writing these dramas, he 
must have discovered that the choice of historical material 
unduly fettered his genius. Even in the historical dramas 
themselves Shakespeare is impelled to take great liberties 
both with chronology and with character. 

Thus he alters considerably the age of Harry Percy 
to make him more clearly a rival to Prince Hal. In 
the second part of Henry IV., also, the chronology is very 
curiously changed so as to convey the impression that 
the events occupy very much less space of time than they 
actually did occupy.^ The space of eight years must elapse 
between the different portions of Act IV., but the impres- 
sion given by the play is certainly that of a few days only. 

1 See my edition, Henry IV., Part II. D.( C. Heath & Co., 
Boston, U.S.A.). 



Conclusion 169 

Nor is chronology the only difficulty. In history, 
the interest is too much diffused and is dissipated over 
too large a number of characters and incidents ; it is 
distracted instead of being concentrated, and Shake- 
speare continually allows the dramatic stress to fall where 
the historic stress does not fall or would not naturally 
fall. 

Moreover, it is possible that even here he allows himself 
to be deflected or, at least, influenced by contemporary 
events. Why, for example, is Falconbridge the real 
hero of King John ? 

This is hardly true to the history of that reign even 
as the Elizabethans conceived it. 

It has often been suggested that the prominence given 
to Falconbridge owes something to Shakespeare's sym- 
pathy for Sir John Perrot. Perrot, also, was the illegiti- 
mate son of a king, a soldier, a patriot, a man whose 
blunt speech got him into trouble. 

In 1592 he was tried for high treason, and condemned 
to death, though his death in the Tower forestalled his 
execution. 

This may, or may not, be the true motive for the 
prominence given to Falconbridge; but whatever the 
motive, there can be no doubt that Shakespeare lays the 
dramatic stress where the historic stress would not 
naturally fall. 

In the two parts of Henry IV., the same tendency is 
accentuated, for there is no doubt that the dramatic stress 
falls upon the character of Falstaff who certainly did 
not bear the historic stress ; if we change the name to 
Oldcastle, the prominence given is less extraordinary, 



170 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

though still remarkable. Even here, it is probable that 
the desire to annoy Cobham, the Puritan persecutor of 
the stage and one of Essex's chief enemies, was a leading 
motive. At any rate, Cobham took it so ; he complained, 
the name was altered, and Shakespeare inserted an 
apology to the effect, " Oldcastle died a martyr, and this 
is not the man." 

Both here and in the case of Falconbridge, it seems 
probable that we have contemporary events influencing 
even the case of the definitely historical dramas and 
producing a deflection of the historic stress. This was 
certainly the method the authorities suspected both in 
Henry IV. and in Richard II. 

And now let us ask what a dramatist who arrived 
at this point in his artistic development would be likely 
to do ? He has an immense love for reality, he wishes 
to describe real life as it is actually lived ; his audience 
take an intense interest in the personaHties and poHtics 
of the time, and having no newspapers, are particularly 
anxious to see them discussed upon the stage ; also the 
poet is patriotic, and wishes to deal with questions of 
national importance. On the other hand, h6 has dis- 
covered that history, as it is actually Hved, is not really 
a good subject for dramatic treatment because its interest 
is too much diffused and its subject is too inelastic. Even 
if it were good material, which it is not, there remains 
the unvarying difficulty of the censorship which forbids 
him to make political references and has already, in 
Henry IV. and Richard II., protested against his doing 
so. 

The obvious expedient is surely to take historic material, 



Conclusion 171 

preferably those contemporary events in which he and 
his audience are most interested, and to alter them until 
they become good dramatic material, concentrating the 
interest, missing out all that cannot be got into a dramatic 
frame or which is irrelevant. 

In this way a really excellent drama could be built 
up, only it would not be historic in the ordinary 
sense of the term ; the poet might, therefore, call it by 
another name ; in that case he would gain two great 
advantages. 

(i) He would be able to modify the history as much 
as necessary to suit his artistic purpose. (2) He would 
be able to deal with contemporary events without falling 
under the ban of the censorship. 

If this plan were followed, the first necessity would, 
of course, be to choose a novel or story whose outHne 
resembled the one desired, and then to modify it freely 
just as Dr Haywarde was accused of doing in the case 
of Henry IV., and just as Hamlet did in the Gonzago 
play. • 

As we have seen, it was a main count in the indict- 
ment against Essex that he had allowed and connived 
at this method of procedure, both in Haywarde's history 
and in Shakespeare's play of Richard II. Essex and 
Southampton, like Hamlet, both damaged themselves 
by their political association with players. 

Shakespeare has the strongest political motive for 
treating history in this fashion ; he has also the strongest 
artistic motive, for a man naturally writes with more 
passion and fervour on subjects which interest him 
profoundly. Let us summarise briefly the way in which 



172 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

we have found political history to be used as material 
in the case of Hamlet. 

(i) At the period when Hamlet was written, the two 
great subjects of universal interest were the question of 
the Scottish succession and the fate of the Essex 
conspirators ; moreover, these two subjects were so 
intimately connected that they formed but one in the 
popular mind and, therefore, in treating them as 
one, Shakespeare would be simply working to a unity 
already existing in the minds of his audience. The fate 
of Essex and the fate of James have been blent in one 
destiny, and Shakspeare sees that, by blending 
them in one play, he can make a really magnificent 
drama. 

(2) Shakespeare himself is particularly and passionately 
interested in both these subjects, not only as every 
patriotic Englishman must be interested in the fate of 
his country, but because the fate of his dramatic company 
has been involved in that of the Essex conspirators and 
because his best beloved friend is even then in danger 
of death. 

(3) This theme, as it stands, cannot be treated under 
actual names, partly because it will only become dramatic 
if concentrated, and partly because the censorship will 
intervene if real names are employed. 

(4) Shakespeare evades both difficulties by choosing 
as a disguise, the story of Hamlet ; this enables him to 
concentrate the history and so turn it into magnificent 
dramatic material and it enables him, also, to evade 
the censorship. 

(5) The process results in what might be termed a 



Conclusion ^ 173 

" doubling of parts," so that one dramatic figure serves 
for two or more historic personages. 

(6) Hamlet is mainly James I., but there are certainly 
large elements in his character and story taken from 
Essex, and probably some from Southampton. It is 
only the "melancholy" Essex of the last fatal years 
who could thus be combined with the more sombre James, 
and even so the character has been found by many 
eminent critics to be not psychologically consistent, and 
by almost all critics to be particularly difficult to in- 
terpret as a unity. 

(7) Claudius, in the murder portion of the story, re- 
presents the elder Bothwell, in his relations to Hamlet 
the younger Bothwell ; his attitude towards Laertes 
and Hamlet is that of Robert Cecil towards Raleigh and 
Essex. His character is largely that of the elder 
Bothwell as drawn by Buchanan, but with added elements 
of subtlety and treachery. Here again, the blending of 
the two subjects works into a unity. 

(8) Polonius, in most of the relations of his life, is a 
minute and careful study of Burleigh, but his end is 
the dramatic end of Rizzio. Here again, the two subjects 
are blent into a unity. 

(9) The play has two sources : the Amleth saga and 
contemporary history, of which the latter is by far the 
more important. The intense vibrating, passionate 
interest of the play is probably due to the fact that 
the subject was, of all possible subjects, the one most 
near to the poet and his audience, its eminently 
artistic form is due to the fact that the poet has 
moulded his material as much as he pleased, and that 



174 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

his guiding principle has always been the artistic and 
dramatic effect. 

If the account given above of Hamlet be really correct, 
then the play is mythology rather than psychology, or, 
perhaps, it would be fairer to define it as mythology 
on its way towards psychology. For a variety of reasons 
this seems to me inherently plausible. To interpret 
Shakespeare almost exactly as if he were nineteenth- 
century psychology is surely to thrust him out of his 
place in the order of development. The psychology 
of the sixteenth century cannot exactly resemble ours, 
and must have some points of difference. Why not this 
resemblance to mythology ? 

In the second place, as even such a thorough-going 
psychologist as Mr Bradley admits, some, at any rate, 
of Shakespeare's plays do produce very much the effect 
of ancient mythology. It seems to me that this effect 
is characteristic of a good many ; that Shakespeare's 
Hamlet, his Lear, his Prospero, can hold their own even 
beside Achilles and Priam, CEdipus, Arthur, and MerHn. 
They are as universal and as romantic. 

Now, we know that the great mythologic figures were, 
in all probabiHty, created in some such way as the one 
suggested above. They were not copied by the poets 
from individuals, still less were they pure fiction ; they 
probably represent accretions round some historic centre. 
Every student of early history knows the facility with 
which two or more historic figures become grouped in 
one, especially when they belong to the same family, or 
have the same name, or perform similar exploits. 

Now, this mythologic method was quite well known 



Conclusion 175 

to Shakespeare's predecessors and contemporaries. As 
I have shown elsewhere,^ Shakespeare's greatest con- 
temporary — Spenser — writes what is practically a kind 
of mythology. He repeatedly 2 states that fairyland is 
really England, and that The Faerie Queene really stands 
for his own age and time. I think most readers will 
agree with me that The Faerie Queene looks even less 
like contemporary history than do Shakespeare's plays, 
yet we have the repeated assurance of its own author 
that it is. 

Now, Spenser certainly seems to use the method I 
have described above : that of historic accretions grouped 
around some central figure. This is most obvious in 
Book v., where we are able to see with perfect plainness 
that Artegall must represent both Arthur, Lord Grey of 
Wilton, and also Leicester, for he performs both Grey's 
exploits in Ireland and Leicester's in the Low Countries. 
I have also endeavoured to show that the same principle 
applies with regard to the other characters ; that Duessa 
is both Mary Tudor and Mary, Queen of Scots, that Una 
represents sometimes the experiences of Anne Boleyn, 
sometimes those of EHzabeth. 

Nor is the mythological method confined to Spenser ! 
A somewhat similar method is employed by Lyly, one 
of the dramatic predecessors who influenced Shakespeare 
most. Lyly writes plays which are ostensibly classical 
mythology, but which are in reality a kind of court 
allegory ; they represent contemporary characters, and 
contemporary politics in a classic disguise. 

^ Faerie Queene, Books I. and II. (Cambridge University Press). 
" Book III. Introduction, etc., see above. 



176 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

Have we not been inclined to forget too readily how 
much of the mediaeval mind still remains in the Eliza- 
bethans ? Why should not Shakespeare have a share 
of that which is so prominent both in Spenser and in 
Lyly? 

Yet, again, pointing in the direction I have indicated, 
is the example of Plutarch, who was almost a lay Bible 
to the Elizabethans. 

He would direct Shakespeare's attention not to the 
study of imaginary characters, constructed on a psy- 
chological basis, but to the study of real characters of 
actual statesmen, with all their idiosyncrasies and peculi- 
arities, and the mere idea of parallel lives grouped in pairs 
would suggest a grouping of such characters as the elder 
and the younger Bothwell, of Rizzio and Polonius, and 
also help towards the main conception — the parallel 
of Amleth and James I. 

It would be, I think, unfair to say that Hamlet is the 
portrait of anyone ; he is more subtle, more interesting, 
more many-sided than any human being ever has been 
or could be. Shakespeare has taken from the story of 
James I. all that was most tragic and most pathetic, and 
from his character all that was most enigmatic, most 
attractive, and most interesting. He has taken from 
the story of James the Orestes-like central theme : the 
theme of the man whose father has been murdered, and 
whose mother has married the murderer. Shakespeare 
has also taken from James the central traits of Hamlet's 
character ; the hatred of bloodshed, the irresolution, 
the philosophic mind, the fear of action, the hesitation 
to punish which is half weakness and half generosity. 



Conclusion 177 

Only in Shakespeare the interest is concentrated as 
it is not in the history. In the history it was the elder 
Bothwell who murdered James's father and the younger 
Bothwell who held James in a kind of duresse vile, and 
threatened his life. By the simple expedient of com- 
bining in one the parts of the two Bothwells, Shakespeare 
gains dramatic unity and an enormous concentration of 
interest. The tragic motive of the father's murder is 
now brought into the closest possible relation with the 
tragic motive of the son's hesitancy and irresolution, 
and the two together make a drama of the most powerful 
and moving kind. What the story gains is what the 
stage so emphatically demands : compression and 
unity. 

But this is not enough ! 

The tale of James I. is not finished and not complete ; 
nothing is rounded off. But the tragedy can be com- 
pleted by uniting with it the tragedy of Essex, which, 
as we have said, is already one theme with it in the 
minds of the audience. By uniting the tragedy of Essex, 
Shakespeare gains a whole group more of most dramatic 
and interesting themes : the longing for seclusion and 
study, the desire to retire from Court, yet remaining 
obediently at the express wish and desire of the Queen, 
even the suit of " inky blackness " is reminiscent of 
the mourning of Essex as the populace had last seen 
him at his trial and execution. The feeling of profound 
melancholy, the longing for death, resembles that of 
Essex in his later years, so does the rivalry with Laertes, 
the sense of fatality and doom, it is in the terrible 
death which befell Essex that we have the clue to 

M 



178 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

Hamlet's shrinking from disfigurement and defilement 
after death. 

It is from this source that we get the generosity and 
kindness of Hamlet's relation to the players, his tampering 
with the play and the ill influence this has on his own 
fate. It is because of this that we have the lack of am- 
bition and the dying voice given to Fortinbras ; these 
resemblances are pointed by giving us in the death- 
scene a quotation from the dying words of Essex. It 
is from this source, doubtless, that we have the element 
of the courtier and the soldier, the winning charm of 
personality which we are told have been prominent in 
Hamlet, for the last thing Fortinbras says of him is that 
he must have *' the soldier's music and the rites of war." 

If Hamlet were only the philosophic prince why this 
funeral, and why the body prominent on a stage to be 
seen of all the people ? 

But the drama is still incomplete ! There is no love- 
story to add pathos. Now, here again, Shakespeare 
takes a motive which he may well have found in the 
drama of Essex, the motive of the innocent and loving 
woman cruelly used as a decoy, the motive of the stolen 
love-letters, stolen to injure the lover, but yet found to 
be love-letters, and nothing more, the motive of the 
bitter grief and wretchedness of the unhappy woman. 

Possibly there is something added from the tale of 
Southampton which is so intimately bound up with that 
of Essex. 

Opheha sings a lament for " bonny sweet Robin," 
and this is the precise title Essex received from his mother 
and others. 



Conclusion I79 

The same method is employed with the other characters 
in the play. Burleigh was only recently dead. He had 
been the great opponent of Essex, he had plotted or was 
beUeved to have plotted against him, he had once 
refused the marriage of Essex and his daughter ; Essex 
had certainly made Burleigh his butt often and 
repeatedly, and had taunted him recklessly and to the 
amusement -of the whole Court; Burleigh, moreover, 
was supposed to have been the secret enemy of James, 
and was accused of tampering with the succession in 
favour of Spain. Burleigh, then, is the main original 
of Polonius, but he died peaceably in his bed, and such 
an ending is not really dramatic. Shakespeare gives 
us, therefore, the dramatic and dreadful death of Rizzio, 
and points the resemblance once again, as in the case 
of Essex, by an almost exact quotation. 
' Claudius is the two Bothwells ; he is most closely 
drawn from the elder, and apparently, from Buchanan's 
picture of him, he has the drunkenness, lechery, adultery, 
incest, \aolence, meanness, cowardice, and personal 
hideousness which Buchanan declares to have characterised 

Bothwell. 

Notwithstanding these facts, he exercised a curious 
and unaccountable fascination upon a queen who was 
already a wedded wife; neither Shakespeare nor 
Buchanan explain how, if he really was as they describe 
him, he contrived to fascinate the queen. Every word 
of Hamlet's terrific indictment of him is probably to 
be taken as true. 

One may further ask: "Has Hamlet a political 
motive ? " It is, of course, quite unnecessary to assume 
M* 



i8o Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

this ; the dramatic purpose, the mere desire to hold up, 
as Hamlet puts it, " the mirror to nature," " to show 
virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very 
age and body of the time his form and pressure," this 
in itself is motive more than sufficient. 

Nevertheless, it does seem possible that Hamlet may 
have, in addition to its purely artistic motive, a political 
motive also : that motive being simply the endeavour 
to excite as much sympathy as possible for the Essex 
conspirators, and for the Scottish succession, since it 
really was the accession of James which set Southampton 
free from the Tower, and restored Shakespeare's company 
once more to the favour of a monarch ; also it is more 
than probable that Shakespeare thought the Scottish 
succession would deliver the whole country from sub- 
servience to Spain. 

In so far as Hamlet is James I., it seems to me that 
Shakespeare means to excite in us the desire to withdraw 
Hamlet from the Denmark which cannot appreciate 
him, and to give him a wider and a finer sphere. We 
know that James himself welcomed with all his heart 
his release from Scotland with its many restrictions, 
its many perils, and its necessity for endless subter- 
fuges, and welcomed the greater freedom of the English 
throne. 

In so far as Hamlet is Essex, the political motive is 
to stress his own unwillingness for the life of courts and 
of ambition, his noble unsuspiciousness and the generous, 
but misplaced confidence which led him to his doom ; 
his instability of character is shown, his rashness, his 
passionateness, but through it all his nobility and the 



Conclusion i8i 

pathos of his fate. Hamlet in death is singularly anxious 
as Essex was anxious that his memory shall be cleared, 
and the circumstances are admitted to be strange and 
doubtful. 

Now, if the method of construction be the one ex- 
plained above, we can hardly expect to find a psychologic 
unity in Hamlet, and I submit that, as a matter of fact, 
we do not. 

Take, for instance, Hudson's argument : 

" In plain terms, Hamlet is mad, deranged, not indeed in 
all his faculties nor perhaps in any of them continuously ; 
that is, the derangement is partial and occasional ; paroxysms 
of wildness and fury alternating with intervals of serenity 
and composure. 

' ' Now the reality of his madness is what the literary critics 
have been strangely and unwisely reluctant to admit ; partly 
because they thought it discreditable to the hero's intellect, 
and partly because they did not understand the exceeding 
versatility and multiformity of that disease. 

" And one natural effect of the disease as we see it in him 
is, that the several parts of his behaviour have no apparent 
kindred or fellowship with each other ; it makes him full of 
abrupt changes and contradictions ; his action when the 
paroxysm is upon him being palpably inconsistent with his 
action when properly himself. Hence, some have held him 
to be many varieties of character in one, so that different 
minds take very different impressions of him, and even the 
same mind at different times. And as the critics have 
supposed that amid all his changes there must be a constant 
principle, and as they could not discover that principle, they 
have therefore referred it to some unknown depth in his 
being, whereas in madness the constant principle is either 
wholly paralysed or else more or less subject to fits of paralysis ; 
which latter is the case with Hamlet. Accordingly insane 
people are commonly said to be not themselves but beside 
themselves." 



i82 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

A reference to a Variorum Edition will show that all the 
aUenists take the same point of view, and consider Hamlet 
mad because he shows a " disharmonic psychology." 

Now, it is exceedingly difficult to see how so many 
eminent critics could have taken such different views of 
Hamlet's character had it really been a psychological 
unity. 

I do not think the case could be better summed up than 
in Hudson's words : — 

"The several parts of his behaviour have no apparent 
kindred or fellowship with each other. . . . Hence some have 
held him to be many varieties of character in one." 

Now, this is precisely the effect that would be produced 
in a mythological figure if Shakespeare were drawing 
from more than one character at the same time, and if 
these characters were such as not to amalgamate com- 
pletely into a unity. The same " disharmonic psycho- 
logy," has been found by many critics in Lear and Macbeth, 
and by some in Othello. 

The final conclusion I arrive at is that it is not 
advisable to think our study of Shakespeare's plays 
complete without careful reference to the history of his 
own time. 



APPENDIX A 

James prided himself on being the destined restorer 
of the Arthurian empire. He offended both his Parha- 
ments by styhng himself, without the consent of either, 
King of Great Britain, and he desired, as Selden puts it, 
to get rid of the very names of strangers {i.e. Scotland 
and England). Masson says in his edition of the Register 
oj the Privy Council oj Scotland : " Nothing is more 
creditable to King James than the strength of his passion 
for such a union of the two kingdoms and peoples as 
might fitly follow the union of the two crowns. The 
intensity of his conception of the desirable union is not 
more remarkable than its thorough-going generality. . . . 

"What had hitherto been the 'Borders' or 'Marches' 
between the two kingdoms were they not now simply the 
' Middle Shires ' of one and the same dominion, and 
ought they not to be re-christened by that name ? Nay, 
why should the distinctive names of Scotland and England 
themselves be perpetuated more than reference to the 
past might make inevitable ? Why should they not be 
known henceforth simply as North Britain and South 
Britain, integral parts of the same Great Britain ? . . . 
By his own royal authority he attempted to abolish the 
names England and Scotland in all general documents." 

James beheved that the Gunpowder Plot was due largely 
to discontented subjects who disliked the union of the 

183 



184 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

two kingdoms and the restoration of the Arthurian 
empire. 

We may also compare the Venetian State Papers 
(April 17th, 1603) : 

" He will stay a few days in Berwick in order to arrange 
the form of the union of the two crowns. It is said that 
he is disposed to abandon the titles of England and 
Scotland and to call himself King of Great Britain, and 
like that famous and ancient King Arthur to embrace 
under one name the whole circuit of one thousand seven 
hundred miles, which includes the United Kingdom now 
possessed by his Majesty, in that one island." 



APPENDIX B 

The following is interesting as a commentary upon 
The Merchant oj Venice. 

It is an extract from the Burleigh papers, a portion of 
what appears to be an actual proclamation entitled : 
" An Account of Dr Lopez' Treason, 1593-4." 

" Doctor Roger Lopez, a Portugall borne ... he did 
use always the means of certain choice persons picked 
out by himself, in whom he reposed special trust, whereof 
a Portugall called Manuel Andrada was one, a man some- 
time attending on the King Don Antonio, both as their 
countrymen say, of one tribe and kindred. This Andrada, 
by letters intercepted, was discovered to have practised 
the death of the said Don Antonio." 

[Andrada travels a great deal, to Spain and elsewhere.] 

" He (Lopez) most wickedly did undertake a most 



1 



Appendix B 185 

heinous purpose and resolution to take away the Hfe of 
her most gracious Majesty by poison that had honoured 
him, a base fellow otherwise, with princely favour, rewards 
and good opinion. 

"... The precious life of our sovereign sacred Princess, 
upon whose life so many lives depend, should have been 
sold. Her life, I say, that giveth life to many, loath to 
take away the Hfe of any, though by Law convicted ; 
a sweet Lady, wonderfully incKning to Mercy, most loving 
to all Strangers ; I may truly say, ' Decus et deliciae 
mundi ' the Jewel of the World. . . . This Stranger, 
made a denizen in the land, her sworn servant, would 
betray her beloved and dear life. . . . For the King of 
Spain, they say, so long as her Majesty liveth, distrusteth 
in the success of his intended purposes. . . . 

" Now like wary Merchants (for their letters were written 
in style of Merchants), that these letters might be conveyed 
with more safety they communicated." 

The document goes on to state how Elizabeth was 
referred to under the disguise of the Pearl : " Indeed this 
Pearl they mean though brought forth in a northern 
climate, yet far surmounting all the Oriental Pearles and 
Jewells, which the East or any other parts of the world 
ever had or hath." 

Now here we surely have remarkable parallels to 
Shakespeare's play ; there is first the disguise of the 
conspirators as merchants which suggests at once Shake- 
speare's title and general scheme. Then we have the 
praise of Ehzabeth as the jewel of the world, far surpassing 
all others, as Bassanio praises Portia (L i.), and we have 



i86 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 

the enthusiastic praise of her mercy ; we have the plot 
of the ahen Jew ; we have the fact that the Jew employs 
to travel for him one of his own tribe exactly as Shylock 
employs Tubal. 

Further close parallels — as, for example, that Don 
Antonio becomes a bankrupt, that he has to borrow money 
from the Jew Lopez even to pay for his clothes, that his 
vessels are lost, one by one or in groups, by fire, ship- 
wreck, etc., in what seems an unprecedented run of ill- 
luck — can be found in the State Papers, 1593-4. 

If the above proclamation were actually placarded on 
the walls of London (as it probably was) when Shake- 
speare's play was performed, the main significance of the 
drama would have been immediately apparent to all. 



INDEX 



Abbott, E. A., Bacon and Essex, 

140 
Amleth Saga, 6,' 30-1, 49, 88, 

103-5, 108-10, 130 
Antonio, Don, 11-14 ; Appendix 

B 
Arthurian empire, James I. and, 

3-6 ; Appendix A . 

Bacon, Antony, 139 
Ban quo, ancestor of Stuarts, 3 
Bassanio and Essex, 14 
Bothwell, the elder, 7-10, 52-9, 

65-71, 90-1, 173-4 

— the younger, 7, 83-7, 90-1, 

106-7 
Bradley, A. C, 72-6, 87, 92 
Burton, character of James I., 

93-7 

— Darnley murder, 102 

— Voyage of James I., 107 

Carberry Hill, 71 
Catholic Earls, 107 
Cecil, Robert, 148-50 

— Thomas, 11 5-8 

— William (Burleigh), 113-^28 
Chamberlain, John, letters of, 143 

Darnley, murder of, 50-63, 

1 1 2-3 
Denmark as Scotland, 6-10 
Drayton on the Stuarts, 4 

Erskine, of Mar and Horatio, y§ 
Essex and Lopez, 12 

— and Bassanio, 14 

— and Richard II., 36-7 

— in historical plays, 40 

— and the Cecils, 45, 121-5, 127 

— Conspiracy, 33-8, 89 

— Countess of, 158-60 



Falconbridge, 167-8 
Falstaff, 15-16, 169-70 
Fortinbras, 161-4 
Francesco, 10 

Guildenstern, 10 

Haywarde on Henry IV., 33-5, 

145 
Henry IV., Part I., 168-9; 

Part II., 14-16, 169 
Hudson, character of Hamlet, 

181 
Hume, Martin, on Cecils, 116-9 

— on Scotland, 39 

James I., character of, 39-44 

Kyd, earlier Hamlet by, 48, 66. 
88 

Laertes and Cecil, 116-9 

— and Raleigh, 148-9 
Lear, identity of, 17-9 

— Plot of, 29 

Lingard, representation of 
Darnley murder, 103 

Lopez, Roderigo, 11-14 ; Ap- 
pendix B 

Macbeth, selection of as a 

hero, 3-5 
Measure for Measure and James 

I-, 99 
Merchant of Venice, 11-14; 

Appendix B 
Merlin prophecies, 3-6 
Mythology, 26-9, 174-6 

Ophelia, 124, 129-38 ; grave 
scene, 158-9 ; love of 
Hamlet for, 160-1 

117 



i88 Hamlet and the Scottish Succession 



Osric, 70 

Othello, difficulties of, 19-21 

Players political connections 
of, 32-8, 146-8, 167-71, 178 

Plutarch, Lives, 176 

Polonius, 96 

Portia and Elizabeth, 13-14 ; 
Appendix B 

Protestantism of Hamlet, 8, 64, 

74-5 
Psychology of Shakespeare, 23-5 

174 
— of Pope, 23 



Psychology of Ben Jonson, 23 

Raleigh, 149-50, 155-8 
Richard II., 145, 167, 170 
Rizzio. murder of, 9, 67-8, 110-2, 

128 

Rosencrantz, 70 

Southampton, 12 
— and Essex Conspiracy, 131-8 
Spenser and Shakespeare, 174-5 
Stuarts, Genealogy of, 4-5 

Weldon, Antony, 94-7 



